China's soft power advance in Australia
Updated
Simmering public sensitivities in Australia over how to view China have been piqued by claims that defence department officials spied on their own government minister over his links to a wealthy Chinese born Australian business woman. This comes amid criticism of the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - over his barely disclosed recent meeting with a high level Chinese delegation.
Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra correspondent
Speaker: Joel Fitzgibbon, Australian defence minister; Barnaby Joyce, Australian opposition senator; Kevin Rudd, Australian Prime Minister; Professor Michael Wesley, director, The Asia Institute, Griffith University
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MOTTRAM: The defence secret spy allegations have astounded Canberra watchers at many levels, and they're being investigated. But it's notable in the current climate in Australia that the issue that prompted the alleged spying is the link between defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon and Chinese-born Sydney business woman, Helen Liu. Nothing untoward has been revealed about this friendship and Minister Fitzgibbon says it is above board.
FITZGIBBON: My family has had a close personal relationship with the Liu family for some 16 years, no one has ever raised any concern with me about that relationship and if anyone had concerns about that relationship they should have come forward and shared them with me.
MOTTRAM: For the sceptics, though, the starting point regarding anyone with connections to anyone with China related business interests is suspicion.
Likewise with the bids by various Chinese firms for stakes in several Australian commodity companies. Opposition ranges from the outright xenophobic to genuinely held - if poorly founded fears - that China might take over Australia, to more measured expressions of concern about issues like China's human rights record.
And when Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd met with a Chinese delegation at his official residence in Canberra last weekend, saying less about it than China's official media, it was fuel on the simmering coals. It drew at least one strong headline and it rang alarm bells for opponents of the Rudd approach, like conservative renegade Senator Barnaby Joyce.
JOYCE: What is Mr Rudd doing, who does he think he is, inviting the fifth highest ranking official of the Chinese government to lunch in the lodge and yet the Australian people don't know what their own Prime Minister is up to.
MOTTRAM: In Washington for high level talks, Kevin Rudd appeared on television and answered questions about how to approach China.
RUDD: When you look at China in the future, I don't think anything is to be served by simply assuming it's all going to go bad. I think the challenge is this, and our friends in America to do the same, work with us in integrating China into the institutions of global governance.
MOTTRAM: As much as its growing military and economic clout it is China's sophisticated use of soft power that sparks concern about the Rudd approach.
Professor Michael Wesley, the Hong Kong based director of Griffith University's Asia Institute, says China is very sophisticated in using soft power, with a key form being the perception of China as the coming centre of power.
WESLEY: And so it is particularly adept at constructing relationships that are positive towards China based around the implicit threat that if you're not particularly friendly towards China then China won't have a positive relationship with you.
MOTTRAM: China's soft power is also in the form of its investment processes, as Australia is seeing, and its overseas development assistance, as Africa and the Pacific for example have seen. A third mechanism is its support for countries that aren't democratic in the Western likeness, the 'many paths to development' approach. And success with these approaches is linked directly to the perception of China's emerging power, Professor Wesley says. It's also supported he says by China's more mature diplomacy.
WESLEY: Chinese diplomats used to be very doctrinaire, very hard line, very abrasive. And the new generation of diplomats that China is sending out to the world are much more urbane, much more confident in their role, much more flexible, and they're much more knowledgable about the countries they're being sent to and they're very effective at following up on China's existing advantages.
MOTTRAM: So, why do you think it is that there is still a degree of fear about China?
WESLEY: Well, I think a lot of people wonder whether China's change of behaviour is genuine or whether it's just a tactic that it will employ for as long as it needs to become rich and powerful. It is only a dozen years ago that China was lobbing missiles over Taiwan as Taiwan had a democratic election. It's only a generation ago that China was sponsoring communist insurgent movements in Southeast Asia. But it is important to, I think, encourage normal behaviour on the part of China and to accept it in a normal great power role.
