Rudd hitches Australia's future to rising China
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wants his fellow Australians to embrace China and the Asian region like never before. But this will be an exercise fraught with political danger given Australia's uneasy collective psyche about its Asian neighbours.
While sports-mad Australians are focused on the Beijing Olympics, and the media is busy complaining bitterly about the degree of security the Chinese are exercising, Mr Rudd is mapping a strategy to make Australia realise that its future lies predominantly in developing deep relationships with China and Asia.
This week, on his way home after waving the flag for the Australian Olympic team, Mr Rudd stopped off in Singapore to deliver a speech that would normally be front-page news in Australia if not for the Olympics.
Along with plugging his idea of a European Union-style Asian club - a concept that has so far fallen on deaf ears in the region - Mr Rudd outlined why Australia needs to move its relationship with China and the region beyond the economic and strategic.
'Will China democratise? How will China respond to climate change? How will China deal with crises in the global economic and financial systems? How will China respond domestically to the global information revolution? And how will Chinese culture adjust to the array of global influences now washing across its shores? ... How China responds to these forces will radically shape the future course of our country,' Mr Rudd said.
While Mr Rudd's conservative predecessor John Howard recognised China as a driving force in Australia's economic and strategic future, what Mr Rudd is doing is fixing Australia's fortunes as a nation to rise with the newest superpower.
And it's not only China that Australia needs to embrace, but the Asia-Pacific region generally. Australia needs to become a fully integrated nation in the region in which it happens to be located - being a European outpost that flirts with Asia is no longer enough, according to Mr Rudd.
Not surprisingly, but controversially in the Australian domestic context, Mr Rudd believes that the way to achieve this vision of making his country 'fully regionally engaged' is to do what no Australian leader has been able to do to date - turn its 21 million inhabitants into Asiaphiles.
'I am committed to making Australia the most Asia-literate country in the collective west,' Mr Rudd says.
And Mr Rudd proposes to do this by 'investing in Asian languages and cultural education in Australia's schools'. His vision 'is for the next generation of Australians - businessmen and women, economists, accountants, lawyers, architects, artists, film-makers and performers - to develop language skills which open their region to them'.
Whether Mr Rudd can achieve this ambitious vision remains to be seen. When Paul Keating, prime minister from 1991 to 1996, embraced Asia and created an Asian languages programme for schools, conservative media commentators and politicians were none too subtle in accusing Mr Keating of being out of touch with 'ordinary Australians'.
Mr Howard abolished Mr Keat- ing's Asian languages initiative when he was elected to office in 1996. Pauline Hanson, the hard-right politician who was elected to the national parliament in 1996 on an anti-Asian, anti-Aboriginal platform, lashed out at Asian influence on Australia.
China and Asia remain even today an uncertain proposition for many Australians. While the naked racism and xenophobia towards China and other Asian nations is now thankfully consigned to history, Mr Rudd's dream of an Asia-literate Australia where the average Joe speaks fluent Putonghua, and watches Chinese cinema, is a tough ask.
But Australia needs to give Mr Rudd a chance to implement his vision if only because it cannot be cut adrift from the region in which it exists.
Greg Barns is a political commentator in Australia and a former Australian government adviser
