Australia shows a lack of cultural diplomacy
During last year's Australian general election campaign, Kevin Rudd told CCTV that, if he won, 'I look forward to taking the relationship between China and Australia to a whole new level. I have many friends there.'
Well, Mr Rudd did win the election on November 24, but this particular promise is sounding a little hollow at the moment given the decision by his government to cancel a new large-scale international cultural relations programme.
Last week, the media reported that, as part of its budget-cutting strategy, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is scrapping its A$20.4 million (HK$140 million) Australia on the World Stage programme, which was introduced only last May by the former foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer.
It's a curious decision, given the desire expressed by Mr Rudd and his government to build 'a comprehensive relationship strategy with China - the country which is likely to shape so much of Australia's strategic and economic future for the next half-century', to use the words of Mr Rudd, himself a Putonghua-speaking former diplomat who was posted to Beijing in the 1980s.
The Australia on the World Stage programme was an attempt to address the fact that while, for example, Britain spends the equivalent of A$19 per head on cultural diplomacy initiatives, in Australia that figure is only 17 cents. China was a key target of the programme, which Mr Downer said was to 'project an appropriate and contemporary image of Australia, boost our cultural exports, promote Australian tourism and education, and support the promotion of indigenous art'.
If Australia and China are to understand each other genuinely, and therefore build a solid basis for their future relationship, then each country must have some insight into the artistic and creative culture of the other, so the argument goes.
And this is an argument of considerable merit, it would appear. Over the past couple of years, an Australian parliamentary committee has been examining, among other things, cultural diplomacy. This committee concluded - after hearing from a range of cultural organisations, government departments and diplomacy experts - that 'cultural exchanges not only inform other people about the culture, creativity and ideals of a country but they help build bridges between countries that in turn support formal diplomacy'.
With specific reference to China, another parliamentary committee reported, in 2005, that Australian cultural diplomacy in China has been used most often as a means to achieve an economic end.
As Jocelyn Chey, a former Australian consul-general in Hong Kong and expert on Sino-Australian relations, said in 2004: 'All too often cultural exchanges have been replaced by exchanges of trade significance. One reason for this shift is probably because these exchanges do not impinge on the problem of national identity. Another is that they suit the materialist spirit of the age, which values all academic and cultural activities in commercial terms. In keeping with this, trade is now the dominant theme of bilateral relations with China.'
The worry for the Rudd government is that, in abandoning a significant cultural diplomacy programme like Australia on the World Stage, it will adversely affect Australia's capacity to influence Beijing. It will reinforce a common stereotype in China and, for that matter, throughout the rest of Asia, that Australia is not particularly interested in cross-cultural exchanges, but is content to simply base its relationships on economic and strategic issues.
Australia, as a smaller western nation, needs to punch above its weight if it is to increase its influence on China over the course of the next decade. Axing a major cultural diplomacy initiative seems, in that context, to be counterproductive.
Greg Barns is a political commentator in Australia and a former Australian government adviser
