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Opinion | China-Australia relations: what Canberra can learn from Gough Whitlam and its own diplomatic history
- Gough Whitlam’s landmark 1971 China visit offers lessons in statecraft: a quality absent from much modern-day Australian diplomacy, writes Tony Walker
- His trip ushered in more than four decades of relatively harmonious relations between Canberra and Beijing – until the recent diplomatic cul-de-sac
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Historical anniversaries sometimes – not always – provide an opportunity to take stock. Rarely do two anniversaries coincide that encourage such an opportunity.
That was the case with the 50th anniversary on July 3 of former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s breakthrough visit to China and the July 1 centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.
Australia needs to take stock of a troubled relationship with its dominant trading partner and guarantor of its economic well-being.
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The two anniversaries, within a few days of each other, should remind us of both the costs and benefits of a complex relationship, and indeed the challenges and threats.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech marking the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party in Shanghai by a group of leftist intellectuals could hardly have been more confrontational.
“We will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us,” he said. “Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
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