Chinese views of Australian foreign policy: Not a flattering picture

ABSTRACT

The economic importance and strategic significance of Australia's relationship with China means that bilateral ties have become a major focus of attention in the scholarly and policymaking communities in Australia. Understandably enough perhaps, less attention has been given to the way the relationship is understood in China. This article addresses this absence in the literature by providing an overview of some of the more important contributions to the discussion in China. The most important point that emerges from such an analysis is that there is an ‘asymmetry of interest’ in the two countries, with Australia occupying a far less prominent place in Chinese policy discussions than China does in Australia. Equally noteworthy is the fact that the study of Sino-Australian relations in China is characterised by a greater variety of perspectives than it is in Australia. Appreciating this diversity is an essential part of developing a more accurate understanding of the policymaking milieu in China.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• China
• foreign policy
• policy debates

Notes

1. It is worth noting that there is considerably more interest in China in other so-called middle powers, such as South Korea.

2. In this article, we use Chinese academic journal articles as a primary source. These articles were collected from China National Knowledge Infrastructure, the largest journal database in China. Specifically, we used ‘Sino-Australian relations' (中澳关系) as the search word to identify the Chinese articles. We found 190 articles with ‘Sino-Australian relations' in the title or keywords between 1985 and 2014. As this article explains, there was little interest in this topic until 2007. Thus, most of the articles that we cite are from the period 2007–2014. We have selected some of the most representative views to introduce Chinese perceptions.

3. Gan is a lecturer at Huaibei Normal University who was trained and worked at Jiangsu Normal University's Australian Studies Centre, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney and La Trobe University.

4. Yue is a lecturer at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law who obtained her Master of International Relations degree at Macquarie University and was a visiting scholar at the Australian National University and Deakin University.