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9781032275024

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This book provides a deeply-researched and clearly-presented account of the way successive Prime Ministers have conceived and managed ties with Beijing since relations were opened in 1972. As Australia debates its future relations with China, it offers a timely and invaluable guide to the way those relations have evolved, and the crucial role that national leaders have played in that process ---Hugh White, author of The China Choice Australia's relations with China, at a time when fresh perspectives and thought-provoking ideas on this issue are much needed. Examining differences in the approach to the relationship by successive Australian Prime Ministers from Hawke to Morrison, his big provocation comes in a final chapter, Imagining an Australia China Security Treaty Agreement , in which he floats the idea that Australia could seek to sign a defence treaty with China. He frames it as an application of the Keating concept that we should find our security in, not from, Asia. Some will find its application to China objectionable, and indeed some even objected to Keating's defence agreement with Indonesia. But I urge those concerned to see more thinking and less dogma in the discussion of Australian foreign policy to read it through, and think about it. The implications force our attention to realities in our foreign landscape that most Australian politicians, even if they think about them, would rather not discuss. ---Steven FitzGerald, Australia's first Ambassador to China between 1973 and 1976 Fitzsimmons opens and closes with the metaphor of the panda and the koala. He presents a powerful narrative woven together from an impressive array of oral history accounts from first-hand observers and participants involved in shaping Australia's foreign policy towards China over five decades. Ranging through the prime ministerships of Whitlam to Morrison, this book goes a long way to explain the trajectory of Australia's engagement with China and how it ended up with the conundrum of the 2020s; increasingly challenged, striving to reconcile its 'fear and greed': the dialectic of Australia's security ties and economic interests. His response is a synthesis: a thoughtful third approach ---John Blaxland, Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies

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David Fitzsimmons is an Assistant Professor at Sejong University in Seoul, South Korea and earned his PhD at the University of Sydney in Australia. He is also a soldier in the Australian Army Reserves in the 1st/15th Royal New South Wales Lancers Regiment in Sydney. His research interests include Australia, the United States, China, and South Korea international relations.

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