On the afternoon of July 9th 1971, within the confines of the rather magnificent Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger sat down with the long-reigning Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. An endeavour to lay the groundwork for President Richard Nixon’s eventual arrival, the conversation was fairly amicable; official documents tell us that “Prime Minister Chou [sic] and Dr. Kissinger informally discussed the tour of the Imperial Palace grounds that the American party had taken that morning.” But merely days before the future Secretary of State and his delegation arrived in Beijing, another Western figure had occupied his place: Australia’s then-Opposition Leader Gough Whitlam.
Many are familiar with Whitlam’s 1973 diplomatic mission as Prime Minister; the image of him alongside Chairman Mao Zedong is iconic. Australian television cameras record Whitlam’s departure from close range: flanked by hordes of rejoicing schoolchildren, under a banner that reads “Warm Send-Off to Prime Minister Whitlam!”, he walks through Tiananmen Square with Zhou and others in his wake. In a foreign policy sense, this journey to the heart of East Asian Communism was a masterstroke and awakened a dialogue that had remained dormant for far too long. His prime ministerial trip could not, however, hold a candle to his July 1971 visit. That one move by Whitlam, from opposition, succeeded in making a mockery of Prime Minister Billy McMahon and regrettably distressed his Japanese counterpart Eisaku Sato.
Today, we would be wise to consider how we have reached the point at which the Australian Ambassador in Beijing is being summoned to explain the sentiments in her home country. The turmoil surrounding foreign donations, potential security leaks and the ethos these create — all conveniently condensed into the image of Sam Dastyari — has threatened to seriously poison nearly fifty years of political and economic progress.
The timing of the first contact between the people of China and those of this continent is not entirely known. Contemporary reports seem to indicate interactions in the 1750s, though earlier cases are not unimaginable. With the arrival of the Gold Rush era, which was especially pronounced in Victoria, the Chinese community in the colonies swelled to approximately 40,000 people, or 3.3% of the overall Australian population at the time. Economic incentives often saw relocation to northern regions. Almost immediately, tensions emerged. Racially-motivated taxation was introduced – beginning in Victoria in 1855, followed by intermittent, restrictive immigration laws.
Photo Credit: National Archives of Australia – A8746, KN15/11/73/16
Operating underneath the economic immigration drive was a more lethal incentive. Under the Qing Dynasty, China was a turbulent society and a significant number of the new immigrants to Australia had come as refugees escaping the Taiping Rebellion conflict that lasted from 1850 to 1871. The size of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, a schismatic Christian rebel state in China’s East, saw the Qing require French and British assistance to quell it. The resulting persecution of the kingdom’s supporters, in particular the Hakka ethnic group, saw many depart from China.
It is no surprise, therefore, that there was a robust and enduring anti-Qing faction within Australia’s Chinese community. Physical monuments to this sentiment exist today – in 2011, the centenary celebrations for the founding of the Republic of China were marked by the placement of a Sun Yat-sen statue in Melbourne’s Chinatown. Although communication and diplomacy existed between Australia and China, both in their youngest incarnations, the immigration legislation that comprised the White Australia Policy saw divisions continue.
The Communist era of Chinese politics did little to enamour the Australian establishment. Festering beneath issues such as the Korean War and devotion to the American line of non-recognition of the Republic of China (Taiwan), was the misguided belief that Communism would invariably spread throughout South-East Asia if it was to be accepted as the natural order. Instances of its spread on either side of the Yellow Sea and southwards into the former region of Indochina helped set conservative faces against embracing the Middle Kingdom.
There is some casuistry on the topic of the Sino-Australian relationship. Too often the example of a ‘pushover’, sycophantic or corruptible political system is used; after all, what are Australians but simply post-colonial, Asia-Pacific butlers, divided between the great Houses of Washington, London and Beijing? It is true that the global economy has increasingly hung upon the whims of the Chinese market in recent decades and that our regional security — in all senses of the word — is impacted by this. However, we cannot afford to be uncritical in our interactions. Abuses of power and a desire for primacy still exist within the nation. While we play the role of ‘put-upon ally’, we cannot be seen to roll over like lapdogs; it might be, among many things, the ghosts of the Tiananmen Square students that keep us from our sleep should we choose to continue without critique.
Reagan is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Political, Economic and Social Sciences at The University of Sydney, and dreams one day of becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @WardReagan97.