Damien Green

Opinion | US proxy or Asia’s trusted partner? Australia can’t be both

Australia’s ongoing failure to engage sustainably with China, and Asia in general, stems from its historic inability to build genuine trust with its regional partners

The Aukus pact proves to Asia that Canberra’s allegiances lie elsewhere. When Albanese visits China at the weekend, this will be the elephant in the room

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Damien Green

Published: 9:30am, 31 Oct 2023Updated: 1:00pm, 31 Oct 2023

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s planned trip to Beijing this weekend represents the latest in a series of positive steps towards getting China-Australia engagement back on track. In spite of this, the uncomfortable truth is that, unless Australia rethinks its deep lack of independence from Anglo-American interests, it will be unable to establish itself as a trusted partner to other Asia-Pacific nations, not least China.

The Aukus security pact and Australia’s planned purchase of its first nuclear submarines are a regrettable case in point.

Australia’s ongoing failure to engage sustainably with China, and Asia in general, stems from its historic inability to build genuine trust with its would-be Asian partners. At the root of this problem is a perceived lack of sincerity, compounded by some Australian decisions that have eroded trust, such as the Aukus pact. This is well understood by Australia’s Asian neighbours as being its track record.

Australian politicians of all stripes look at Asia through the lens of a “China Emergency” narrative – a term coined by international relations scholar Chengxin Pan and political scientist Linus Hagström in their influential 2021 article in the Australian Journal of Politics and History. Pan and Hagström call Australia’s puzzling “fixation” with the China Emergency one of the “mysteries in contemporary world politics”.

Indeed, in releasing a report on Australian engagement with Southeast Asia recently, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong spoke in ominous tones of “great competition” in the region, where “complacency is not an option”. This is a continuation of the country’s pronounced strategic anxiety fuelled by populist politicking on the so-called China threat.

Wong’s positioning ignores the messages coming from Southeast Asia, where nations are charting a far less hawkish policy on China in favour of strategic pragmatism.