*This post was first published on OnLine Opinion, 30 October 2012
Months in the making, hours in the judgement,
but what of its prolonged impact?
The Gillard Government’s much-anticipated white paper on Australia’s
engagement with the Asian region was released on Sunday at the Lowy Institute
in Sydney. Australia’s diminishing pool of Asia specialists is simultaneously
hopeful and sceptical. A few of the old hands around are silently ruminating on
white papers past while others eagerly anticipate the promise of a
whole-of-government response to a multi-faceted document which sketches out our
future in the region to 2025. Instead of starting afresh, we would do well to
view this White Paper as a statement which consolidates our past with Asia
while stepping up to a more nuanced approach.
Media coverage since its release has focussed on the economic and trade aspects
as well as the need to learn some of the languages of the region, notably
Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean. The languages and the economy
have been inextricably linked. It is a common theme in Australia’s engagement
with Asia, we tend to see the region as a market place to buy and sell our
commodities and our policies follow. If we continue to approach Asia in this
way, we will continue to churn out white papers which will promise much but
deliver little.
This White Paper does cover more detail than the predominant commentary
would suggest. There is a conscious effort to convey the depth and breadth of
relationships and building stronger security options in the region. There is a
reiteration of the importance of people-to-people contact. Out of the spotlight
of white papers, it serves us well to acknowledge that this ‘sudden emergence’
of the Asian century has been, in fact, a century (or more) in the making.
In the immediacy of seeking economic fulfilment, it can be easy to
overlook broader historical trends. This white paper announcement coincides
with the 40th anniversary of normalisation of relations with
mainland China. The rhetoric then argued for closer, more complex relations. In
1976, Australia and Japan signed a basic treaty of friendship and cooperation
which aimed to soften the sharp edges of the predominantly economic
relationship. That relationship had gained economic primacy through the 1960s
and 1970s on the back of resources trade. In 1989, Professor Ross Garnaut
focussed clearly on the economic potential and markets in Northeast Asia,
introducing the promise of South Korea to the Australian consciousness in the
way China and Japan had been introduced half a generation earlier. Prime
Minister Paul Keating during his term made much of an Asian turning point and
notwithstanding the scepticism surrounding the sudden conversion of the
Francophile, he did energise APEC through a stronger leaders’ forum.
We can go back further in our history when we were less self-conscious
about our interaction. The signing of a trade agreement between Japan and
Australia in 1957 where wartime enmity was slowly giving way to a strained
mateship in a largely pragmatic recognition of where Australia’s future was
headed. We can go further back, to the 19th century, where Japanese
intellectuals espoused the value of Australia to the region for the ‘Pacific
Century’, yes—the turn of the 20th century.
The brief history lesson is not to diminish the significance of the
latest white paper. Rather, as noted above, it is better to see this white
paper as a consolidation of a deep foundation of Asian engagement stretching
back over a century, not stepping out anew.
When introducing students to the study of the
region I like to offer a couple of anecdotes. The first is that 30 years ago,
as an undergraduate, we debated the proposition that ‘Australia is a part of
Asia’. Naturally, as a group of Asian studies students, we figured the answer,
in the affirmative, was a ‘no-brainer’. But thirty years seems a long time to
keep revisiting a debate.
The second anecdote is a little more personal.
I tell students that I was one of 300 or so Year 8 students introduced to
Japanese language in Queensland in the mid 1970s. There were about ten schools
across Queensland at the time doing the same, so roughly 3000 new students to
the language started their journey. Using my school as an example, by Year 12
we had a class of six. Of those six only one went on to university to study the
language, gain a few qualifications and become reasonably fluent. Once we
multiply that across Queensland and the rest of the country, and add to that
the fact that Japanese and other Asian languages have become a well-established
element of school curricula in the intervening 35 years, we end up with quite a
mind-boggling number of potential ‘Asia-literate’ people. Our reality of course
is that only the pro-rata equivalent of that 1/300 go on to make a career of
it. Imagine if we had capitalised on all the energy and commitment all those
years ago.
Still, I always aim to be more hopeful than sceptical. I am passing into
‘old-hand’ status now and I will seek to capitalise on this momentum while I
can, as I did in 1989 and as I benefited from in the 1970s. We are now actually
more deeply embedded in the Asian region than perhaps even the self-conscious
commentary of the past couple of days might realise. Prime Minister Gillard’s
passion for education over foreign affairs is self-proclaimed. Perhaps her
educational imperatives can override the economic pragmatism of previous Asian
endeavours and we can build on the momentum of Asian centuries past to embrace
Asian centuries of the future.
