The toxic roots of China-phobia are deeply embedded in modern Australia’s cultural history. It has a firm grip on the minds of many of Australia’s policy wonks, politicians, media commentators, and the general public.

Today it is being fanned by security hawks in the foreign policy domain who are desperately committed to the quixotic (mis)alliance with the US.

China-phobia is an entrenched narrative in modern Australia’s cultural history. Based on false assumptions and the purveyors of fake news (for example, the Murdoch media), it has become an abiding threat to contemporary Australia’s national interest on two vital fronts. First, it is alienating China as it reasserts itself as a great power in the Asia-Pacific region. Secondly, it is cementing Australia into what has always been a dangerous dependency alliance with the US.

The cultural history of modern Australia is marked by an indelible thread of racism that runs unbroken from the 19th century through to the present. The ruthless maltreatment of Aborigines — including displacement, enslavement, rape, and massacres — became routine from the earliest days of white settlement. Virulently present during the Gold Rushes in the 1850s, racist discrimination was an everyday experience of Chinese gold seekers. Its most notorious formal expression was legally enshrined in the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act – the white Australia policy.

Outspoken right-wing figures like John Howard routinely parrot the tired old refrain that Australia is not a racist country. Or, like Tony Abbott, they loftily disregard the deep moral flaws at the centre of white settler colonialism’s harsh historical legacy, while insisting that racism is merely incidental — if not irrelevant — to the great past and present achievements of mainly white Australian males. They are dreadfully wrong. Racism is one of the most enduring and damaging features of contemporary Australian life. As Jonathan Ben and his colleagues have revealed: “In Australia, racism remains historically and structurally entrenched, interpersonally pervasive, and has harmful consequences across various life spheres, spanning areas as broad as economic participation, justice and incarceration, and health and wellbeing.” (See Jonathan Ben et al., “Racism data in Australia: A review of quantitative studies and directions for further research,” Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2, 2024: pp. 228-257).

Moreover, a subtle but malign racist subtext underpins the public and private conversations of political and policy aficionados in Canberra and the media, who are whipping up fear about an imminent or actual “China threat” to the country. They point to events like the harassment of RAAF aircraft by Chinese warplanes around the South China Sea. They sound the alarm when Chinese “spy” ships circumnavigate the Australian coast (albeit in international waters). They want to cancel Chinese company Landbridge’s 99-year lease of facilities in Darwin’s harbour. They complain that China is using its sophisticated communications technologies to harvest Australian commercial and strategic intelligence. Some, like the lamentable Clive Hamilton, have even warned of a “silent invasion” of Australia by Chinese students in our schools and universities, and by Chinese tourists, spies and business personnel. In their constricted imaginations, China is now the greatest threat to Australia’s security – or at least, that appears it is what they want Australians to believe. And in the process, they are leading the country down a very dangerous path.

It is on the basis of China-phobia that this country’s stance towards China is being formulated. It is a distorted stance that ignores America’s provocative strategy of encircling China – a strategy in which Australia is enthusiastically and, very stupidly, colluding. Despite engaging in these provocations, the tepid Albanese Government insists it is intent on “normalising” relations with China in order to shore up Australia’s vital export markets there. Ignorance combined with hypocrisy is an ugly foreign policy mix.

Like all racist ideologies, the racist subtext underpinning Australia’s current security thinking is based on an appalling ignorance of China in particular, and Asia more generally, across the entire country. Ignorance breeds fear and shuts down minds. It persuades people to bury their heads in the sand, to fear a world “outside” populated by hostile aliens, a world of scary “others.”

A comprehensively new approach to Australia’s diplomacy with China is urgently needed. It must be led by officials who are fluent in Mandarin. Too many diplomatic mistakes are based on “lost in translation” moments. The country’s Chinese and Asian awareness more generally urgently needs to be based on educated understandings of China’s (and wider Asia’s) history, culture and politics. This will require nothing less than a revolution in primary, secondary and tertiary education curricula. While the folly of ignorance of China in particular, and Asia more generally, prevails in Australia, a wise understanding of its real geopolitical challenges and opportunities will decline, to the country’s immanent peril.

It’s time for Australia to sever the indelible thread of racism that is holding this country back from becoming a mature and truly independent country. A carefully calibrated diplomacy must replace Canberra’s hamfisted dealings with Beijing and with wider Asia, while freeing the country from the manacles of the American alliance. The “historically and structurally entrenched” racism at the heart of Australia’s culture, documented by Jonathan Bell and his colleagues, has for far too long alienated the country from its Asian neighbours. Racism has driven successive Australian Governments into the arms of Uncle Sam. As Malcolm Fraser warned over a decade ago, the US is now by far the greatest threat to Australia’s security. An independent, Asia-literate Australia is the surest path to a peaceful and prosperous future for the country.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.