While elsewhere the China discourse in the Australian media may have been on geopolitical tensions and defence and security concerns, community leaders, students and academics from seven universities in Australia and 15 universities in China and Taiwan met in Parramatta on the campus of Western Sydney University a few days ago.

Around a hundred delegates gathered for the tenth Australia-China Transcultural Studies Symposium and the ninth Conference of the Foundation for Australian Studies in China. These dialogues have continued despite interruption by the pandemic and tensions in bilateral relations, bringing together people whose main aim is to improve understanding across cultures and political divides.

Many of the papers concerned literature. Wenche Ommundsen of the University of Wollongong spoke about the increasing number of Chinese Australian novels and other works and commended their original and interesting perspectives that are helping to shape the direction of Australian literature. The contribution of Chinese Australians in this and other aspects of the bilateral relationship was one of the themes of the conference, as was the significant deep interest in China in Australian Indigenous culture. Not all discussions were on literature and the arts. Chen Xi of East China Normal University and James Laurenceson, the Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at UTS Sydney, discussed the marked increase in collaboration between Australia and China in recent years in various fields of science, as evidenced by the number of joint papers published in leading science journals. This dovetailed neatly with Laurenceson’s quietly optimistic forecast for trade and economic relations.

One paper that interested me came from Lily Zhang of Nantong University, China, concerning the 1979 novel ‘The Confucius Enigma’ by Margaret Jones, who was the Sydney Morning Herald correspondent in China from 1973 to 1975. Margaret told me later how pleased she was that Sydney University Press had classified her novel as an important work of Australian fiction and authorised its republication in 1982. The plot of the novel was inspired by her time in China (which overlapped my first posting to Beijing) and the curious incident of the disappearance of Marshal Lin Biao, who was then widely regarded as the most likely successor to Chairman Mao. Margaret Jones was a pioneer of women journalists and a staunch defender of all journalists’ right to report uncomfortable truths even at great personal cost.

Thirty-five years after the publication of this spy thriller, no matter whether in China or Australia, readers will not fully understand it unless they also appreciate the political machinations of the Gang of Four and other Chinese political leaders during the later period of the Cultural Revolution. Lily Zhang had done some remarkable detective work of her own to discover the background to the novel since many of the disasters of the Mao Era are not openly discussed in China.

Speaking at the opening of the two conferences, Australian writer and former cultural counsellor in Beijing Nicholas Jose said that it was important to focus on the future:

“To get there I hope for peace, achieved through the harmony and balance that comes with good management, and for the good relations that come with dialogue and exchange. And that we’ll be well-informed. That may sound utopian, but really it’s not much more than a continuation of what we are trying to do in the present. It’s about maintenance, about keeping things going for the common good in an unpredictable and threatening world.”

Jose highlighted the network of people-to-people relations across Australia and Asia that supported bilateral relations even through difficult times, while regretting the downturn in Australia’s China Capability as outlined in the 2023 Report for the Australian Academy of the Humanities, which I have previously discussed in this Journal. In her introduction to this report, Frances Adamson, former DFAT Secretary and former Ambassador to China, wrote “China knowledge allows us to orient our relationship effectively towards positive outcomes”.

Likewise, knowledge of Australia helps China orient relationships towards all kinds of positive outcomes.

I am immensely encouraged to see pragmatic and down-to-earth discussions like those at the two Western Sydney conferences. While armchair strategists argue about China and its foreign policy, elsewhere students are engaged in trying to understand the culture and mindset of each other’s country. While some Western economists predict China is about to collapse through debt and mismanagement, engineers and scientists rely increasingly on cooperation to resolve global problems in the environment, health and AI. Traders know that global supply chains connecting the world with China are essential and highly prized.

It is good that Prime Minister Albanese met China’s Premier Li Qiang at the ASEAN Summit in Vientiane. I hope he assured him that while we value our alliance with the US, Australia does not endorse Washington’s talk of “going for victory” and seeking regime change in China. Nothing good would come of military conflict between the two great powers; it would in fact be a global catastrophe, as King’s College London China specialist Kerry Brown said recently at a conference hosted by Chandran Nair of GIFT (the Global Institute For Tomorrow). Since, as Brown says, China’s foreign policy is pragmatic and not isolationist, naturally their scholars are keen to understand Australian views and to engage in discussions. In the same way, it is high time that we paid more attention to what Chinese scholars and Chinese spokespersons say and think.