a-chinese-stretch-of-the-imagination

But if you look at where the emphasis falls in the new White
Paper and in the Prime Minister’s speech introducing it, it’s on
the economic and mainly about us and the ‘what’s in it for us’. It’s
about ‘winning in the Asian Century’, she said.
The disjunction between the economic and the political is most ap-
parent on the subject of Chinese investment in Australia, one of
the few serious issues on which the government has joined debate
about China, even if mostly only when forced to. It wants Australia
to be open to Chinese investment, more or less, but it has lacked the
kind of political relationship that could test questions or reserva-
From left to right: Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, Gay FitzGerald,
Stephen FitzGerald and Wu De (Mayor of Beijing) at Beijing Capital Airport
farewelling Gough Whitlam, November 1973.
Courtesy of Stephen FitzGerald
利的经济主导关系本身非失误,但是正如澳新银行的麦克·史密斯所
说,‘我们应当挑战自己,应当问一下自己,经济到底是不是我们同中
国关系的全部,我们是否满足仅仅得到一个靠得住的贸易伙伴,甚至是
投资者’,如此卓有见地的话语,居然是出自一位银行家之口。
如果你关注一下亚洲世纪白皮书以及总理的相关讲话,将发现其重点依
然落在经济上,它所关注的仍旧是‘我们’和‘此事对我们有什么好
处’。对此,我们的总理大人说‘这就是关于如何赢得亚洲世纪’。
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