A new China narrative for Australia Submission
转载者按语:以下是澳洲政界学界联合撰写的关于中国的报告,文章认为澳洲今后的发展对华依赖很大,澳亟待推出符合新时代的对华政策,值得中国外交部参考。 这些论述立场与华盛顿有明显的差距,被美国财团控制的澳洲主流媒体经常充当制造反华氛围,阻扰澳中关系转寰的推手作用。 6park.comA new China narrative for Australia 6park.comSubmission by Peter Manning 6park.com7 May 2019 6park.comAs a scholar of representations, I have concentrated on Australian policy and media narratives 6park.comof "the Middle East” and of one religion, Islam. While not a foreign correspondent in the 6park.comtraditional sense, I have travelled widely as a journalist and reported from many countries 6park.comforeign to most Australians. However, China was not one of them. 6park.comI am therefore reluctant to enter the area of China policy. However, as a journalist of nearly 50 6park.comyears’ practice, I am well aware of the intimate connection between government policy and 6park.commedia narratives, and my latest book Representing Palestine (I.B. Taurus, London, 2018) certainly 6park.comstudies that connection in great detail. 6park.comI would make some obvious points which should inform any government narrative towards 6park.comChina: 6park.com1. An awareness of the Western colonial enterprise (of which Australian was a military 6park.comparty after the Boxer Rebellion) which reduced the empire to a plaything of Japan, Russia 6park.comand Western powers until 1949. 6park.com2. An awareness of the way in which the US Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed and enacted 6park.comto ensure a dramatic expansion of American power in the Pacific and the Caribbean. 6park.com3. An awareness of the economic distance travelled by Communist China to lift most of its 6park.comcitizens out of poverty and regaining respect throughout the world for its emergence as 6park.coma major, if not the, major player on the world stage. 6park.com4. An awareness of how attractive trade with China – from ore to students and tourism – 6park.comhas become to Australia to the point of “putting all our eggs in one basket”; and finally 6park.com5. Acknowledging the decline of American interest in our region and the decline of the 6park.comUnited States more broadly following a disastrous series of costly (in every sense) wars 6park.comof occupation in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – and Australia’s “me too” attitude 6park.comto involvement. 6park.comIt is against this backdrop that we have quickly found ourselves at odds with the growing power 6park.comof China. This is in grave contrast to the era of Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and 6park.comforeign ministers like Bill Hayden and Gareth Evans who took China up as a friend from 1972 6park.comonwards. 6park.comIn short time we have found ourselves in diplomatic trouble. 6park.comIn my view, we should: 6park.com• Make it clear that Australia is doing its own “pivot” but this time it is not from Britain to 6park.comthe US, but from seeing ourselves as part of an “English-speaking ‘Five Eyes’ network" to 6park.coma country celebrating its future in Asia; 6park.com•Treat every Chinese initiative like the Belt and Road Initiative as a potential opportunity 6park.comfor joint partnership unless proven otherwise in our national interest; 6park.com 6park.com• Develop soft power links with China that enhance the complexity of our relationship and 6park.cominvite a mutual trade in creative enterprises (like translating, film festivals, ABC, 6park.comscholarships, etc) much like the Goethe Institute does; and 6park.com 6park.com• Encourage tourism to China, not just in reverse. 6park.comIt is clear that we cannot pretend to be accepting of some of the dictatorial and un-democratic 6park.comactions of the Chinese government and its various arms. We should be up-front about the 6park.comabductions of citizens and the appalling treatment of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province 6park.comand elsewhere. The more we stay silent the less that will be done to curb such atrocities. 6park.com 6park.comBut in my view, we should act from a stable basis of friendship with China and its great culture. 6park.com 6park.comAustralians have long had a history of bad race relations, starting with the First Peoples. For 6park.commore than a century the stories of massacres of Chinese gold miners at places like Lambing 6park.comFlats held sway in the Australian imagination of the nineteenth century. Then came White 6park.comAustralia in the twentieth. Then the Germans, the Jews, the Italians and Greeks, the Vietnamese, 6park.comthe Lebanese (especially Muslims) and now we seem to be verging on a new China panic. 6park.com 6park.comWe need to grow up as a nation, adopt a more independent foreign policy and treat China not 6park.comas part of our Western conspiracy but as our regional friend and partner in trade and diplomacy 6park.com– based on our national interest as we define it. 6park.com 6park.comPeter Manning is an Adjunct Professor of Journalism at the University of Technology Sydney
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