Pearls and Irritations

CGTN Radio host Liu Kun interviews Ambassador Tony Kevin, Ambassador Geoff Raby and Dr. Zhao Hai on Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent trip to Australia and broader China-Australia relations.

(The following is a transcript of the World Today show on CGTN Radio broadcast on March 22nd.)

Liu Kun (host): 
Welcome to World Today, a news program with a different perspective. I’m Liu Kun in Beijing. In this edition, we discussed Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent trip to Australia and broader China-Australia relations.

In his most recent visit to Australia, Wang Yi participated in the 7th China-Australia Foreign and Strategic Dialogue with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, met with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and sat down with leaders in the business and strategic sectors in Australia. This was Wang Yi’s first visit to Australia in 7 years. Albanese told Wang Yi that Australia-China relations should not be defined by differences and disagreements. Wang Yi said that since bilateral relations have returned to the right track, the two sides should move forward without hesitation, wavering, or backpedaling.

What’s been learned from strained relations in the past few years? What’s the way forward that will benefit both sides? For these questions and much more on China-Australia relations, I’m joined by Tony Kevin, former Australian Ambassador to Poland and Cambodia and author of the book “Return to Moscow”; Dr. Geoff Raby AO, former Australian Ambassador to China, Non-executive Independent Company Director Chairman, Geoff Raby & Associates; also we have Dr. Zhao Hai, Director of International Political Studies at the National Institute for Global Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Thank you all for joining me to talk about this very important trip by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.Now let’s begin by taking a look at in general the occasions of this visit by Wang Yi. Maybe let me start with Ambassador Raby, please.

Ambassador Raby:
Yes. As you said, I think the main point is the visit took place being the first one after 7 years, which is extraordinarily an unprecedented long time for the Foreign Minister of China not to have visited Australia.

It was extremely important in that respect. It was a reciprocal visit for the visit Australian Foreign Minister made last year. I think the atmosphere was very positive and we can fairly confidently say that the relationship is pretty much back to normal.

Liu Kun:
Dr. Zhao Hai, from China’s perspective, how would you comment on the occasion of this visit?

Dr. Zhao Hai:
I think this visit marks a very significant change of bilateral relationship that started from a year and a half ago. This is very important because Wang Yi hasn’t visited Australia for 7 years. Seven years ago, what happened was that the U.S. changed government and the Trump government changed its China policy and then following that up Australian government also changed its policy towards China. This bilateral relationship has been deteriorating for the past couple of years. And now it’s finally back on track. So I think this occasion marked a beginning of a new era, and hopefully this improvement can continue for the foreseeable future.

Liu Kun:
Indeed, stabilisation, that’s the word that’s been talked about and mentioned quite a lot on both sides. Ambassador Kevin, let me go to you, from Australia’s perspective, what are the main achievements of this meeting between Wang Yi and top Australian officials, including Albanese, Penny Wong, et cetera?

Ambassador Kevin:
Thank you for having me on the program. To me the visit marks an opportunity to break the downward slide in Chinese-Australian relations, which began with President Obama’s visit to Australia in 2011 and the famous American “pivot to Asia”. Since that time, Australia has come under increasing pressure from the United States and pro-American elites in the Australian intelligence and military industrial complex area to line up with the United States in a very aggressive containment of China.

So China’s behaved with enormous patience during a very long period. And Australian Prime Ministers from Malcolm Turnbull through to Scott Morrison behaved with great rudeness and insensitivity towards China. With the election of a labour government there certainly has been improvement in tone. More diplomatic manners, basically. But I think the basic problems are still there.I don’t share Geoff Raby’s optimism that we’ve really turned the corner. I think we are in a moment of extreme both opportunity and danger. And the Chinese Foreign Minister has made it very clear in his diplomatic language, but reading between the words, which I hope we will be doing during the course of this discussion, has very much put Australia on the spot.

Liu Kun:
Now, Ambassador Raby, how would you respond to Ambassador Kevin’s words? And from what you see, what has been the achievement for Australia after this visit?

Ambassador Raby:
I think Tony’s referring to the the bigger geopolitical contest that is being played out. Of course Australia is caught up very much in that and has been for a long time, as Tony said. My point is that in the day-to-day management of the relationship, things are very different than they were 18 months ago. I think we will see the removal of all the remaining and quite unjustified Chinese trade measures that were introduced against Australia. These reciprocal high level visits really do speak of return to normalisation. And I think for me, the bigger takeout of the whole visit is that there was a clear announcement that Premier Li Qiang will visit Australia in June or July. Again, reciprocating visit to Beijing last year by the Australian Prime Minister.

So in terms of the day-to-day management of the relationship, I think it is actually back to something like business as usual. We will never have a return to the effervescence of what existed 15 or 20 years ago in the relationship, certainly not during my time as Ambassador here. And that’s simply because China has grown on so big, so powerful. It’s a very different world today. But again, I come back to the point of distinguishing between, if you like, the global geopolitical contest, which will continue to intensify, and how we manage the relationship on a day-to-day basis.

Liu Kun:
Indeed. Just to clarify, I think we’re still waiting for official word from both governments to declare any high level of visits reciprocal from either side at this moment. Let me go to Dr. Zhao Hai for a moment, because earlier Ambassador Geoff Raby talked about Australia feels like there have been unjustified trade measures from China in the past few years. How would you respond to that?

Dr. Zhao Hai:
First of all, I think China-Australia trade is really, really mutually beneficial. Because just now I think we mentioned the two sides’ bilateral trade has reached a new high surpassing pre-pandemic era and reached about 230 billion U.S. dollars. That’s very significant for countries like Australia. I think Australia，during the time of difficulty, also made Indo-Pacific strategy, trying to diversify its trade relations and increase export to other countries. But the result is that there’s no other country that can replace China. I still remember that at one time when the relationship was getting tense I asked somebody: can Australian iron ore find another buyer and can China find another supplier? The answer is no because China and Australia is a perfect match. That amount of iron ore has no second buyer, and China cannot find that quality of iron ore or quantity from any other country. So that’s significant. I think it signified how the two countries are really fitting with each other in terms of their goods and services. And I think there’s still a large room for growth in the future.

And to answer your question I think is very simple because the last government, the conservative government really put pressure on China and particularly followed the U.S. and they first banned Huawei in Australia ahead of other countries. And that is a very bad example. Also Australia has attacked China verbally, particularly during the pandemic and also accusing China of unfounded foreign interference cases. So in many cases, I don’t think blaming China one sidedly is justified.

Liu Kun:
As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has already said, now the relationship is back on the right track, let’s just try to move forward to look at this issue more constructively. Again, Dr. Zhao Hai, from China’s perspective, what are the main achievements of this visit?

Dr. Zhao Hai:
I think there are three folds as Foreign Minister Wang Yi has specified. Number one, it’s very important both sides set aside differences and recognise the common ground, and we can build on top of that common ground to realise the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. That’s most important. And the second thing, it’s very important to recognise that this trade relationship, cultural, people-to-people relationship, is really mutually beneficial. Thirdly, I think it’s that Australia again discovered that a more independent foreign policy is crucial to deal with China, because if you follow and listen to command of other countries, losing your own foreign policy autonomy, that’s going to interfere and bring destruction to the bilateral relationship, and restoring bilateral relationship must be based on that. And China also emphasises that our foreign policy is independent. We’re not getting into any alliance against Australia. So I think, strategically speaking, Australia shouldn’t worry about its political relations with China.

Liu Kun:
Let’s take a look at the respective words from the two Foreign Ministers after this 7th China-Australia Foreign and Strategic Dialogue. Penny Wong said that from now on “Australia will be Australia, China will be China” during the press conference. Wang Yi talked about the experiences of handling China-Australia relations. He mentioned four aspects of which I think doctor Zhao Hai has kind of talked about. So these four aspects are to uphold mutual respect, to stay committed to seeking common ground while shelving differences, to pursue mutual benefit and win-win results, and the last one is to remain independent. Let me go to Ambassador Kevin, how would you interpret the words from both Penny Wong and Wang Yi?

Ambassador Kevin:
As to Penny Wong, I would criticise her position as still being, a little more politely expressed, the same transactional approach to relations with China that characterised the three previous Australian administrations. In terms of Wang Yi, with the four aspects–and it’s interesting he did not call them four principles or anything grand like that, he said four aspects–the most important one is the first, because if Australia can’t remain independent, which means independent of the United States, there’s no way Australia can pursue a policy towards China on the other three aspects, to uphold mutual respect, to seek common ground while shelving differences, to pursue mutual benefit and win-win results. So I mean we’ve been pursuing this fallacious policy now for many years, and it’s been getting worse, of trying to everywhere align with the military power of the United States against our most significant trading partner as we just heard about. And it’s quite inconsistent. I don’t think we can go on doing that. We have to make choices on the basis of Australian national sovereignty and what’s best for our country and our people.

And I’d like to mention some very important developments within Australia over the last month to support that view. First of all, there was a statement drafted by former Foreign Ministers Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, supported by 48 other Australian dignitaries across a wide variety of fields, trade, academic, and politics and so on, which would really endorse those four principles in different language. It’s a very good statement. If I find fault with it, it is that we are still pursuing this rather egotistical idea that we can go out and influence the region as a middle power. I think what we need to be doing is listening to the region. And I’m glad to see during the ASEAN summit in Sydney a couple of weeks ago, which was shortly before Wang Yi’s visit, Mr Albanese would have been privately told by senior ASEAN leaders from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and so on that it wasn’t welcome for Australia to be joining in this military encirclement of China, that the ASEAN way was to do things differently, to handle gently. And the third important statement was of course made by former Prime Minister Paul Keating. He is an Australian elder statesman with great distinction. After his private meeting with Wang Yi and in very few succinct sentences, Keating once again brought up the point that Australia-China relations will not work until it is based on proper mutual respect, proper diplomacy, proper sense of mutual security. And just sort of get out of this banker-trader mentality into something a little bit more fundamental.

Liu Kun:
Ambassador Raby, what’s your comment on these four aspects mentioned by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and also “Australia will be Australia, China will be China” by Penny Wong?

Ambassador Raby:
Yeah, well I think the 4 points are quite sensible and practical. And that’s how you would only manage this sort of relationship and most relationships are managed this way. I think the difficult one of course for the Australian government is the independence of foreign policy. As Tony has sort of outlined, there’s been a big discussion about that last month or so in Australia, not enough perhaps at the political level in Australia, but certainly people are very concerned about the extent to which we seem to becoming a hostage to U.S. foreign policy priorities, and particularly with respect to China.

So that is very difficult. And I think in many ways, Penny Wong, the Australian Foreign Minister, constantly tries to dance around that issue. She has a formula, which is looking for “strategic equilibrium” in Asia. And it sounds fine. But the problem for Penny Wong is her notion of “strategic equilibrium” means U.S. continuing preeminence in the East Asia. That’s the problem. She can’t move away from that because of our very deep security alliance with the United States. So there’s a sort of contradiction. There’s something not spoken in Penny Wong’s position and “strategic equilibrium” really means continued U.S. preeminence. Whereas I think people in Australia who talk about a more independent foreign policy are prepared to accept that there will be no major state that will dominate the region, and that it’ll be necessary to find balance amongst shifting coalitions of countries. But it’s very, very hard for any Australian foreign minister to move away from a position that would not see the U.S. as the dominant power in the region.

Liu Kun:
Indeed, the geostrategic situation is changing every second. We have about a minute and half to go to a break, but Dr. Zhao Hai, of these four principles or aspects mentioned by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, which one do you think is the most important?

Dr. Zhao Hai:
I think from China’s perspective of course the most important is to set aside differences and enlarge the common ground, so basically working together on the issues that we can agree with each other and increase our mutual benefits. Right now, one of the biggest problems is of course what Ambassador Raby mentioned, the independence of Australia’s foreign policy may be a hostage to a foreign agenda.

Right now, there are domestic obstacles to improve Australia-China relations, because there are some think tanks actually working for the United States and promoting false accusations and mis-representing China’s international global intentions. And that is really bad influence on the public opinion in Australia. And secondly, Australia is wrapped up in a quadrilateral mechanism and also AUKUS, all kinds of security and military alliance and mechanisms that are designed by the United States. So it’s hard to get out of that. And because of this, China is saying, basically, we want to set aside those differences, you can be Australia, just like Penny Wong said, but at the same time, working together on some bilateral, beneficial issues so that both countries can improve our mutual trust and people-to-people friendship for the future.

Liu Kun:
If you’re just joining us, this is World Today and we are having a panel discussion on Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent visit to Australia and broader China-Australia relations. We’re going to a short break. When we come back, we’ll continue the discussion.

(promo)

Liu Kun:
Welcome back to the show. I’m Liu Kun in Beijing. In this edition, we discuss Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent visit to Australia and broader China-Australia relations. We have with us, Tony Kevin, former Australian Ambassador to Poland and Cambodia, also author of the book “Return to Moscow”; Dr. Geoff Raby AO, former Australian Ambassador to China, Non-executive Independent Company Director Chairman, Geoff Raby & Associates; also we have Dr. Zhao Hai, Director of International Political Studies at the National Institute for Global Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Now, let me go back to Ambassador Kevin for a bit. People also often say that China-U.S. relations are arguably the most important bilateral relations in the world. And both China and Australia consider the relations with United States very important for them. But Ambassador Kevin, in your opinion, why, in what ways do China-Australia relations matter for both sides?

Ambassador Kevin:
There’s always been the question of Australia’s strategic geography. In particular, our satellite tracking stations, joint facilities with the United States, give Australia’s geography a very important role in giving the United States nuclear war-making capacities, in the same way as with Pine Gap we provided these capacities for the U.S. against the Soviet Union. These facilities are now coming into view against China, as the U.S. militarises its position for the planned political-military containment of China.

And what this means paradoxically is that although Australia as a country poses no threat to China, Australia’s strategic geography does. And that puts the Australian position that we have to take much more seriously to make and preserve our national independence. We need to ensure that we won’t be seen by China as a compliant puppet of the United States, threatening China in the most basic strategic ways. And I am really impressed by Wang Yi’s diplomatic language in expressing these points. Paul Keating commented after the private meeting with Wang Yi, Keating commented, “Wang Yi both encouraged and welcomed Australia’s continuing integration with East Asia, where he believed Australia would thrive.” And I believe that’s the polite way of urging Australia to disentangle from the United States. And in a similar way, Penny Wong less than 2 years ago suggested that we should be finding security in Asia, not from Asia. And she also suggested that Australia should seek an order, trying to find“strategic equilibrium”. I think it has been correctly pointed out that is not a “strategic equilibrium” that involved American military power containing China. It’s a “strategic equilibrium” based on mutual respect and mutual security. So we have still got quite a long way to go. And I respect all the 50 Australian leading figures who have put down markers in their joint statement, on how to achieve a proper relationship between Australia and China.

And I will just on this moment say finally that I don’t think the forthcoming visit here by the Chinese Premier is necessarily a done deal. I think there were enough let-outs there that if there were to be an anti-Chinese reaction in Australia led by the pro-American implants in our political system and our military system, that visit might come into question. So I think we’re very much on probation, and I hope that we will follow the right course.

Ambassador Raby:
Can I just comment quickly?

Liu Kun:
Yeah, Ambassador, please.

Ambassador Raby:
Kun, you picked me up on this, but now Penny Wong in her press statement, straight after the meeting with Wang Yi, said very explicitly that the visit was happening in June. Now, I agree very much with Tony that things can come out and blow these things of course. I don’t like to think that we are on probation. I don’t think people welcome that. Anything can disrupt a high level visit from any country, not just between, not just one from China. But Penny Wong was very explicit about a visit in mid-year. So I think we could take that as a given, subject to any unknown, and we don’t know the unknowns course.

Liu Kun:
That’s the thing, because we are still in March. And I’m 100% sure that we are waiting for the official word, at least from the Chinese side. But again, Ambassador Raby, going back to you, in your observation, in your opinion, in your daily management of this bilateral relationship when you were Ambassador, why do this specific bilateral relationship matter for Australia?

Ambassador Raby:
It matters enormously, and it goes beyond the transactional of course. Zhao Hai has talked about the economic dimensions of it. They’re enormous and then mutually beneficial, and the complementarities are profound. But China is a very significant part of the region of course, it goes without saying. And all of Australia’s interests, whether it’s stability on the Korean Peninsula, whether it’s asymmetric security issues, such as money laundering, criminal activities, terrorism, whatever people’s been battling is a very big one for Australia. All of issues require Australia to engage closely with China and China to engage Australia and work in a very cooperative way.

And it’s quite interesting that if you go beyond the headline issues which tend to be beaten up and exaggerated greatly in Australia, you find there’s a lot of practical level cooperation between Australia and China.

Now that was disrupted over the last 4 years, sadly, because of the antagonistic and aggressive behaviour of the Australian government towards China, particularly under the Morrison government. But we need to get back to that. And just as China wants to deal with criminal activity between Australia and China, we want to do the same. So we cannot as Australians live in the region without having very constructive, very productive, very close and trusting relations with China. And we had that once, and we need to find a way to get back there and one part of that is this ongoing, high-level dialogue which has been resumed. As I said in my opening remarks, 7 years without a foreign minister’s visit from China is astonishing.

Liu Kun:
It’s quite something.

Ambassador Raby: 
Yeah, almost no one in the region could take us seriously if we are unable to manage our relationship with China. It’s as simple as that.

Liu Kun:
Dr. Zhao Hai, why does this relationship matter for China then?

Dr. Zhao Hai:
I think Australia apparently is a very important country in the southern hemisphere. Literally, Australia is part of the global south and it has strategic geographic position. It has good, very important trade relations with China. And it has a huge, very tight, close people-to-people relationship with China as well.So that’s one thing we can’t ignore bilaterally.

But I want to emphasise another aspect, which is that from the 1990s Australia has been a leader of regionalism. China has benefited and also cooperated with Australia on that aspect. So the emerging of APEC, for instance, in Asia Pacific region, is one of Australia’s contributions. And also Australia and China are the first countries among others to sign a bilateral free trade agreement. And then later on, we’re both in RCEP and also right now China is trying to apply to join CPTPP with which Australia is part of. So I think in many cases, Australia and China can work together on global governance issues, on regional trade issues, and on a lot of rules-based regional regulations. And in the future, there are a lot of things we need to work together on. For instance, on service trade, on digital data flow, and also on many important issues like climate change. And also, like the Ambassador mentioned, a lot of other law enforcement aspects. So I think in this world…oh I almost forgot, in G20. So I think in this world both countries need each other. And without the other part, we can’t work out this global governance and global system and work on our common challenges. So that’s why this bilateral relationship is so important in today’s world.

Ambassador Kevin:
Can I add to that, please?

Liu Kun:
Yeah, please, Ambassador.

Ambassador Kevin:
Thank you. I think we shouldn’t only be thinking about the importance of Chinese-Australian relations in an Asia Pacific, regional context. We should be actually talking about it in a global governance context.

Now, China is a permanent member of the Security Council, and it has always been since the formation of the United Nations. China is taking an increasingly active and very positive global role, in — as we just heard in the news bulletin before this discussion –seeking to bring about negotiations between Russia and Ukraine over the conflict there, also seeking to assist towards restoration of peace and security for the people of Gaza subject to possibly genocidal assault. These are big global questions, and they are questions that could generate World War Three. Australia should be talking to China about these sorts of issues in a frank and mutually respectful way, and not hide behind the American alliance and say “that’s out of our league, that’s above our paygrade” in the Australian vernacular, that “we leave such discussions to our senior security partner.” I would like to see the opening up of a real, mutually respectful, mutually responsible dialogue at the level of prime minister or indeed at the level of deputy prime minister or at the level of premier. All those possibilities still await us.

And I’m not a pessimist who says that we can’t go back to the golden years of Australia- China relations 15 years ago. There is no reason why we couldn’t. We have a large Chinese Australian population in this country, which is a unifying factor between the two countries. We are not threatened by China in any way. We have allowed ourselves to be inveigled into an unproductive security relationship with the United States. That’s something we have to work out for ourselves. But meanwhile, we should be talking to China for the very large mutual benefits that provides.

Liu Kun: 
Let’s talk about America, because we have been talking about it but now I want to focus on it. Australia is a major ally of the United States. Ambassador Raby, both in your opinion and your actual work in the foreign service, what has been the role of the United States in the development of China-Australia relations?

Ambassador Raby:
The United States has been enormously influential. And I agree with Tony that from the 2011 Obama pivot it became more and more difficult to manage the relationship, more and more difficult for Australia to manage its relationship with China. Very much from 2017, there was a real break from that time onwards. I’ve written about this in my Australian Financial Review columns. We hear all the time about Chinese interference in Australian domestic politics, but we have our premier think tank on security, ASPI, which is funded largely by the U.S. military industrial complex. You just go through the Murdoch press. Rupert Murdoch himself runs a very strong anti-China line. We have think tanks all over the country funded by the U.S. or U.S. associated businesses, which maintain a constant drumbeat of anti-China criticism and rhetoric. The other thing that I’ve written a lot about is: where is the China threat? I’m not saying there is no China threat, but saying those who assert there is a China threat ought to get out and demonstrate what the exact threat is. We have funded our security agencies massively in the last 5 or 6 years to hunt down and track down Chinese agents of influence. And I keep saying: where are the bodies? So we’ve barely come up with a person in that period of time. It’s impossible to exaggerate in my mind the extent of U.S.influence in Australia’s China policy.

Liu Kun:
Dr. Zhao Hai, from China’s perspective, how would you see the role of the U.S. in China’s relations with Australia?

Dr. Zhao Hai:
I think the proportion of America’s influence on the bilateral relationship is really heavy. And the thing is China tries to…I think some people in Australia, just like the Ambassadors and other people, understand the relationship from a rational point of view that China does not pose existential kind of threat to Australia. In reality, China should be the best friend to Australia. So I think in this respect it’s very hard for America to work Australia against China in the long run. However, in the short run, I think, the United States is using this paradigm of democracy versus autocracy and trying to use ideological differences to separate China and Australia and other Asia Pacific countries. It’s been quite effective because that way they can describe the threat in a very murky, unclear, descriptive way and not to name bodies. Right? So it’s getting easier for them to alienate and try to paint China in a very malign way, exerting influence in Australia.
I think one thing is very important, that finally, because of AUKUS, the United States finds out a way to basically link the Australian military with the United States’ military so tightly, and asking Australia to invest so much money in building this nuclear submarine to deal with the unforeseen threats. It is really ridiculous. And so that is, I think, a wake up call for many Australians to the real intention of the United States in this respect, and realising that if Australia follows that track, it’s gonna hurt its own national interest and losing its sovereignty. So I think to a certain extent it is going too far.

Ambassador Raby:
Zhao Hai, can I just directly comment on that?

Liu Kun:
Yeah.

Ambassador Raby:
It’s not really to disagree with what you’ve said. It’s to simply say it’s never gonna happen.

Liu Kun:
What’s never gonna happen, Ambassador?

Ambassador Raby:
The AUKUS. We are not getting a submarine.The idea that we talked today about this imminent and present China threat, the security threat to Australia, military threat. And yet the first submarine, if it ever did happen, is not until the 2030s. Meanwhile, our own submarine fleet, the Collins Class fleet is running down. I think this won’t survive one change of political term in the United States or in Australia. Just yesterday, there was an Australia-UK, UK obviously one of the AUKUS partners, meeting and Australia has volunteered to pay 5 billion dollars to subsidise the United Kingdom’s ailing submarine building capacity. Australian taxpayers aren’t going to wear that in time. And equally the UK is not going to be able to fix up its own problems in its submarine manufacturing.

All I’m saying is that there are enormous, practical and political problems around this. And so I’m confident it’s not gonna happen and I’m sure, again I’ve written about this, that I don’t think it’s moved the dial one inch in terms of the Beijing sense of threats to its security.

Ambassador Kevin:
Can I comment on this?

Liu Kun:
Yeah, I was going to ask you anyways.

Ambassador Kevin:
Thanks. All those are practical reasons why AUKUS isn’t going to work, and I hope to God that Geoff is right. They need to be reinforced by a philosophy, or an ideology of Australian sovereignty. We need to get back to re-discovering who we are, who we have been, and who we can be again. We have been subject to a creeping takeover. The Australian defence ministry and intelligence agencies in Canberra are full of American accents. It’s not a laughing matter. We basically let the Trojan Horse in, right across our national security system, to a point where we really have to ask ourselves, who is telling us what to do and who is really interested in what we want to do for ourselves?

And this is why China is very important to Australia also, because unlike Russia, which creates a lot of problems for a lot of people, which I won’t go into here, we do have the basis for a very good relationship with China relatively quickly. I do think that the next few months are going to be crucial, because there will be a counter-attack. I think it’s significant that Wang Yi declined to have a press conference at the end of his visit, because he knew that the press would be spoiling to try and disrupt the good atmosphere, atmospherics of the visit, and would be trying basically to blight the whole parade. Those forces are still very much here in Australia. A lot of people have their careers engaged in all this anti-Chinese, sinophobia. So I’m not as optimistic as my former colleague Geoff. I think we’ve got to work on this, to try to provide an intellectual underpinning to what we are doing to improve the China-Australia relationship.

Liu Kun:
This reminds me of what Penny Wong said during the press conference. She said Australia-China relations need daily work. Basically, that’s the word, but maybe not exact words. I think Ambassador Kevin talked about something which is very interesting and important and related to a recent poll that I saw. The poll was done by British newspaper the Guardian. It’s about Australians’ perceptions of itself in today’s world. The poll found that 38% Australians believe the country should be an independent middle power with influence in the Asia Pacific region, while only 20% said Australia should be“primarily an ally of the United States”. Ambassador Raby, how do you see the results of the poll? And how should Australia position itself strategically today?

Ambassador Raby:
I saw the results as quite encouraging and just reading them shows you the good thing about Australian people as they have a lot of common sense. They are not overly swayed at times by a lot of the nonsense that comes out of the media on these sorts of issues.

But on how we position ourselves, I think, as I said, the management of the relationship is much more difficult now than it was. I hear Tony and all of his points and I agree with him and I hope he’s right. But China is a much more difficult partner to deal with today. You’ve got issues like China’s assertion of authority in the South China Sea, which is heavily disputed. There are a number of other disputes with neighbouring countries. China does, and quite rightly — I’m not criticising China for adopting a more assertive, muscular foreign policy, nor am I criticising China for its military build-up — but these things will create tensions in the relationship. They do take us in slightly different directions. And so the challenge for us really is to find a clear view of our interests in this relationship, which obviously is dominated by economic interests, but there are, as we’ve discussed, many other interests, and seek to find a way to build dialogue and engagement in the relationship. And I think what happened this week with the two Foreign Ministers’ meeting is part of that. I do think we need to be clearer that a future region that achieves “strategic equilibrium”, as the Foreign Minister would like, is one where neither the United States nor China dominates the region. And that’s I think what we need to work towards.

Liu Kun:
Time is running really fast. We have about only two and a half minutes to wrap up the whole show. But Dr Zhao Hai, has China been adjusting its policy, especially in the Asia Pacific region? And in regard to that, has China’s Australia policy changed?

Dr. Zhao Hai:
I really don’t think that China’s policy towards Australia changed in a fundamental way. There are probably technical adaptation, but fundamentally, I think China has been very consistent in terms of how to have good relations, long term relations with Australia. As we said before, we have a complementary economic relationship, we have a close cultural and people-to-people relationship, and strategically and geopolitically, we don’t really have a conflict.

I think just now, Ambassador Raby talked about some of the issues. We can debate another day about whether or not China’s foreign policy in those areas are assertive or even aggressive. But I don’t think that’s gonna, in any way, harm Australia or create so called dominant position of China in the Asia Pacific or even larger area, in particular, replacing the United States in the region. I don’t think that’s China’s strategic intention at all.

So based on that, I think it should be easy to create a good relationship between the two sides. Just not looking too far away, just look at New Zealand. New Zealand over the years has maintained very good relations with China. It has managed this relationship with maturity. And in recent days, I think the Prime Minister of New Zealand will visit China again. I think in light of that…New Zealand is also a member of “five eyes”, also a treaty ally with the United States. So I think it’s not that this relationship cannot be managed, even with the United States present, it’s that having a correct perception of China, where China was, where China is going and understand that China does not pose the threat, but a common opportunity. And then I think building on that we can have a very good and long term and prosperous bilateral relationship.

Liu Kun:
I wish we had more time to discuss more about Australia’s perceptions about itself and China’s policy in the Asia Pacific region. But indeed that’s all the time we have for this edition of World Today. Again, I want to thank our guests, Ambassador Tony Kevin, Ambassador Geoff Raby and Dr. Zhao Hai. If you want to catch up with more of our discussions, you can find our podcast by searching “World Today”. You can also follow us on the X platform @CGTNRadio. I’m Liu Kun in Beijing. Thank you for staying with us. Bye for now.