THE MAN OF STEEL AND THE DRAGON: AUSTRALIA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH CHINA DURING THE HOWARD ERA
PROPOSAL

INTRODUCTION

On consecutive days in October 2003, President George W Bush of the United States of America and President Hu Jintao of People’s Republic of China addressed joint sittings of both houses of the Australian Parliament. This historic occasion symbolises how Australia conducted its foreign relations with ‘East’ and ‘West’ during the Howard Era. The pragmatic decision to allow Hu Jintao to become the first non-American foreigner to address both houses demonstrates how Howard viewed Sino-Australian relations. It showed the world that it was possible to have warm relations with both the United States and China. By the end of the Howard Era in 2007, China had become Australia’s major trading partner.

This was a far cry from 1996, when in the first months of the newly elected Howard Government a series of events caused severe tensions in Sino-Australian relations, as described below. This culminated in the Chinese response of banning visits to China by Australian ministers, a serious manoeuvre in the nuanced world of diplomacy. From these frosty beginnings, the relationship between the two nations strengthened considerably, for a variety of reasons, some of them outside Australia’s control.

Paul Keating may have sown the seeds to Australia’s ‘pivot’ to Asia, but it was the Howard Government that undertook the most significant shift in orientation, cumulating in the historic addresses referred to above in October 2003. With the 21st Century being described as the ‘Asian Century’, Australia’s ‘tyranny of distance’ has been replaced by the ‘prospects of proximity’. Australia’s relationship with China in the mid 1990s to mid 2000s arguably helped place itself in a better position to benefit from what may lie ahead.

RESEARCH QUESTION, AIM AND PROBLEMS