中澳建交40周年征文(英文组冠军)Past the parallax rousing a new China-cognisance

Past the parallax: rousing a new China-cognisanceBy Thomas WilliamsThe purpose of this essay is to briefly outline why the Australia-China relationship is of singular importance to Australia's national life and how the current Australian mindset concerning China is unsustainable and an impediment to future prosperity. It identifies the cultural and structural barriers that will need to be overcome to bring about this change and the policy, business, and personal initiatives that can be taken to achieve it. Ultimately, this essay posits that Australians, especially young Australians, need to critically assess our current frames of reference and motivators, and actively engage with our desired future in the Asia Century by taking proactive measures now. The Australia-China relationshipThe establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and the People's Republic of China on 21 December 1972 represented the re-normalisation of longstanding Australia-China ties grounded in strong economic complementarities in resources, labour, and services; 40,000 Chinese immigrated during the Australian gold rushes, trade in pearls, bananas, and sugar had prospered for a hundred years prior, and Australian William Mayers brought the first steam engines to China. The last forty years have seen the continuation of economically-framed relations, with Australian Wheat Board lobbying factoring in Whitlam's initial PRC recognition, Hawke appointing chief economic advisor Ross Garnaut to the Ambassadorship in 1985, Howard putting aside personal neo-conservative convictions to pragmatically strengthen trade ties, and the $50billion PetroChina-ExxonMobil Gorgon LNG project being signed in 2009 at the lowest point yet in the bilateral relationship. Since 1972, two-way trade has increased from A$100 million to A$100 billion, China has become overwhelmingly Australia’s largest export market, Australia is the largest recipient of outbound Chinese foreign direct investment, China is the largest single source of migrants to Australia, there are over 150,000 Chinese student enrolments in Australia, over 500,000 Chinese and 300,000 Australian tourists visit the other country each year, and China adds an estimated A$13,400 to the annual income of each Australian household.This prosperous trade relationship flows from the unparalleled size, speed, and scale of Chinese economic development, which has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and radically altered the global economic landscape. China's national priority oriented growth model has necessitated a frenetic pace of infrastructure construction that has generated enormous demand for Australian primary resources such as coal, natural gas, and iron-ore. Barring domestic political or ecological crises, China's pattern of strong growth will continue into the foreseeable future, likely seeing a quadrupling of GDP by 2030, on the back of five latent factors: rural to urban migration, increasingly-realized domestic economies of scale, huge untapped consumer market potential, long-term state educational investment, and gradual RMB internationalization. Combined with the policy agenda of 12th Five Year Guideline torestructure Chinese economic development away from unsustainable export and fixed investment led production towards increasing domestic consumption above its currently low levels of approximately 40% of GDP through strengthening social security, lifting wages, and developing the services industry, the Chinese economy will become increasingly sophisticated and present more diversified opportunities for Australia-China economic integration, especially in the tertiary sector. Australia’s and Australian’s lack of prescience and China-orientated skills are the only possible impediments to actualising these latent potentialities for greater bilateral integration, such as using Chinese labour and capital to develop upstream processing infrastructure for Australian resource exports or Australian service-providers expanding into second- and third-tier Chinese cities.However, China's growth has not been without its downsides. The all-pervasive state power structure, whilst playing a fundamental role in marshaling China's economic resources and maintaining a genus of general social stability, has become increasing kleptocratic and self-entrenching. Corruption is systemic and self-replicating with an internal patronage and financial reward mechanism that incentivises the pursuit of misguided economic goals and party-preservation over broader social interests. The visibly gaping wealth divide is widening. The Central Government has refused to publish Gini coefficient statistics for the last eleven years (estimates have it at 0.47), and the Beijing Municipal Government has recently banned luxury advertising for fear of the fomenting of class unrest, especially amongst migrant workers. Environmentally, 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China, almost half of all naturally-occurring water has been rendered undrinkable, and China's ecological crisis and collateral social damage has been recognised as a serious potential threat to the state power structure. Politically, the Chinese State must spend more on internal security than national defence to handle over 100,000 "mass-incidents" of dissent each year, and ethnic tensions surrounding cultural autonomy and social disenfranchisement often lead to violent crackdowns and protest.It is thus both an illustrious and a grim tale. In very Montaignian terms, Australian journalists, academics, politicians, and citizens collectively form a public space that, due to a general lack of China-literacy and propensity to battology as a stopgap for a lack of understanding, manifest a desire for the pitching, holding, and debating of positions on "the China issue", over-polemicising an extremely complex phenomenon and obfuscating the full and nuanced portrayal and analysis of the parallel and competing narratives coalescent in modern China. To comprehend China's present and forecast its future, we must remember that, due to its size, there are many "Chinas", that can paradoxically simultaneously seem to be on the point of collapse and in the midst of unrivaled success. If Australia is to seize this present opportunity for future prosperity, we must go beyond narrow perspectives and cultivate a new China-cognisance.Beyond the coalfaceAustralia is in the midst a time for change. China is now of singular importance to Australia. Economically, 27.3% of Australian exports go to China, representing a China reliancy-ratio far greater than those of China's neighbour Japan (19%), fellow resource-exporter Canada (3%), and our closest ally the United States (5%). Furthermore, 65% of all Australian exports to China are iron-ore concentrates. However, whilst the resources boom has been the central factor in Australia's current economic success, China will not be eclipsed as Australia's primary economic partner and will fundamentally alter the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific, meaning an effectively iron-ore dependent relationship is an insufficiently diverse and unnecessarily limited base from which to engage with China. Given China'sself-evident importance, it seems strange that Australia would have such underdeveloped broad-based China engagement mechanisms and allow for continued China-illiteracy and -apathy. Symptoms of this are apparent in the political mismanagement and projection of the Australia-China relationship: Tony Abbott's recent electioneering discouraging Chinese foreign investment in Australia, Julia Gillard's "gushing enthusiasm" for Obama's "Asia Pivot", and the Rudd Government's clumsy 2009 Defence White Paper labeling China a military "threat". That Australia still lacks a multi-level institutionalised government dialogue with China. Few Australian executives visit China for face face-to-face relationship-building. Only 4% of Australian schools offer Chinese as a Second Language.For an Australian I think that the uncertainties, anxieties, and even fears surrounding China’s rise stem from misapprehensions about the Chinese State. In Australian iconography the Chinese State still stands as a shadowy, omnipresent, and ruthless figure focused upon securing power and removing belligerence. The unknowns surrounding the Chinese State, its operations, priorities, strengths, and frailties, are the wellspring of deep reservations that Australians are unlikely to be able to quell. It must be acknowledged that this is at least partially influenced by our deep-rooted history of racial bias, as evinced in the darker xenophobic side of the Eureka Stockade being a protest against Chinese "cheap labour" and the White Australia Policy, which only formally ceased in 1973. There also subsists in the Australian a sense of moral superiority over the Chinese State and, in some ways by virtue of this, over the Chinese national (or Australian) who tries to even explain, let alone defend, the Chinese State's rationale or methodologies. Yet, the hypocrisy of this stance given Australia's own human rights failures with regards to Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers is seldom recognised. Nor is it appreciated enough that the average Australian lacks empirical knowledge about China, with most publicly-disseminated information on China in Australia focusing upon economic growth statistics, perverse sensationalising of genuine ethical scandals, or a success story described away as a "miracle" of superior numbers. The average Australian thus has a limited knowledge base from which to form views on China. As such, it is not surprising that Kevin Rudd, the first Chinese-speaking Western leader, was lambasted for being a "panda-hugger" despite him being a defence policy hawk on China and overseeing the "annus horribilis" of Australia-China relations in 2009. Nor is it difficult tocomprehend why Australian public debate is still vacillating in the limbo of the false dichotomy between security and economy in the USA-China-Australia scalene triangular relationship.How Australia and Australians respond to China and prepare for the future depends upon how China is framed in public debate. The current rendering of Australia's future as a choice between our existing cultural and security ties with the USA and a possible Asian economic future bound to China is reflective of a narrow outlook not cognisant of the geopolitical realities confronting Australia in the Asian Century. This is most evident in the national security debate, where in the midst of much bellicose scaremongering purporting Chinese military designs vis-à-vis the USA (and supposedly thus Australia), precious little space is given to exploring the security perspective from Beijing or the institutionalised depth and breadth of the USA-China relationship. Conflict with the USA ranks as a less important security concern for China than incomplete nationhood regarding Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet, over 22,000 kilometres of sometimes disputed land borders where historical mistrust runs deep, potential meltdown in the Korean Peninsula, ongoing tensions with Japan, conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea, and over-reliance on foreign markets for primary resources.xxxi Sensationalised concerns, no matter how eloquent, not only fail to appreciate the untold economic ramifications for China of military engagement with the USA, but also the multi-level government management of the relationship, through such mechanisms as the USA-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. As humbling as it may be, Australia needs to embrace a more mature attitude towards our role in global affairs and realise that we are a relatively irrelevant country beyond our good fortune to possess abundant resources, favourable geography, and solidsocio-political institutions. In light of this, Australia also needs to reconsider our steadfast reverence for the ANZUS Treaty, in the name of which we have sacrificed much treasure and blood in far-flung theatres of conflict irrelevant to the Australian national interest, yet have received little in return: the one time Australia invoked the Treaty, with regards to Indonesian aggression towards Malaysia in 1964, seeing America decline to participate on the basis the Treaty only provides for a "right to consult". These self-realisations will enable us to more perspicaciously envisage the Australian national life we desire for the future and the endeavours that will be necessary to achieve it. Australia needs to learn more about China, but ultimately more about itself.Australia dreamingIf we as Australians can go through this reformative process and thereby gain a greater understanding of ourselves, and thus our position within Asia, we stand well positioned because of our natural and institutional endowments to ensure further economic prosperity for Australia and China. But this future is by no means secure. If Australia maintains its current mindset of engaging with China merely as a primary resources exporter, rather than a broad-based highly-integrated regional partner, we will deny ourselves innumerable opportunities to diversify and expand bilateralrelations and expose ourselves to possible diplomatic and economic damage resulting from political mismanagement, such as populist proposals like the Coalition's recent China-aimed discussion paper on foreign direct investment that would lower the FIRB "national interest" scrutiny trigger from A$244 million to A$15 million on foreign purchases of agricultural land. Not only can "accidents happen", but there also remains the risk that Australia will squander its current fortuity by failing to make long-term investments and structural changes for the future. We must seize the 40th Anniversary and employ it as a platform to recognise the great responsibility that our economic prosperity entails and judiciously assess where we desire theAustralia-China relationship to be by the 80th Anniversary. To do this it is of paramount importance we turn to the question at the heart of the relationship: for what purpose does Australia, as a people and a nation, pursue economic growth?This may at first appear irrelevant or even puerile to query with regard to matters of international relations, but the desire for growth is the default standpoint from which assessments and plans for Australia’s future are made. There is not space here to delve deeply into this fundamental question of economic philosophy, but it is of vital importance on the 40th Anniversary that it is raised, engaged with, and clear attempts are made at answering it. For if Australia continues to move forward with the implicit idealisation of iron-ore-propelled-economic-growth fixated on consumerism as the panaceatic end goal that ultimately delivers the greatest good to the greatest number, then we should openly recognise this in order to make more astute international security calculations and economic policy decisions that deliver this outcome. If, however, as I believe, the economy is a means rather than an end in and of itself, then Australians must collectively, rigorously, and openly explore our national priorities and utilise our current unique economic advantages such that we make farsighted investments in scientific research and human capital development so as to reorient society away from the distraction of attempting to satiate personal desires through transient hedonic consumption towards self-cultivation and individual empowerment through greater access to quality education, increasingly inclusive, broad-based, and meritorious social decision-making structures, and the sustained pursuit of technological advancement to provide for fuller living capacity. In particular, in relation to China, by ensuring A ustralia’s continued prosperity beyond the resources boom through strengthening investment and economic diversification in service sectors such as ICT, finance and banking, by fostering Australian human capital through compulsory Asian language and cultural education (with a heavy focus on China) and relaxing immigration quotas, stimulating Australia’s research and development sectors through greater funding and liberalizing of legal regulations so as to allow for the operation of commercial incentives, and by placing "deep ballast" in Australia-China political relations through regular institutionalised high level government meetings.Ultimately, Australia and Australians need to realise that the standpoint from which we perceive China determines our view. To ensure we secure a better future, we mustmove past the parallax and cultivate a new China-cognisance that allows us to behold and engage with all that is China, because we as young Australians have the greatest vested interest in the future, as we will be the ones who will live it.网址:.au/china_studies_centre/images/content/china_express/issue_3/featu red_links/Past-the-parallax-Thomas.pdf。