Beijing, Canberra mark 50 years of relations

The 50th anniversary this year of Australia establishing diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China has triggered many reflections.

I vividly recall the election on Dec 2, 1972, that brought the Australian Labor Party led by Gough Whitlam to power. Within a month, on Dec 21, 1972, the Whitlam government established formal recognition of the PRC.

In January 1973, Australia finally vacated its participation, as amilitary ally of the United States, in the Vietnam War.

These were radical steps. They asserted Australia's independent sovereignty in a way not previously seen, not least because certain, key geopolitical decisions were taken without first seeking approval from Washington.

In fact, Whitlam made an extended visit to China in July 1971 when he was still opposition leader. That trip also set initial alarm bells ringing in Washington and London.

Australia's foremost investigative journalist, John Pilger, writing in the Guardian in 2014, said that a former CIA officer, Victor Marchetti, told him that a "kind of Chile (coup) was set in motion" by 1975, after Whitlam had demanded to know if the CIA was running a major spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs in central Australia. This, according to Marchetti, "caused apoplexy in the White House". The base remains fully operational to this day.

On Nov 11, 1975, the Queen's formal representative in Australia, then governor-general John Kerr, controversially sacked Whitlam as prime minister, relying on archaic, vice-regal reserve powers. This was despite Whitlam having a clear majority in the House of Representatives in the Australian Parliament.

Kerr, who had been appointed by Whitlam, was known to have enduring connections with the Australian security services and the CIA.

The chief, direct political beneficiary of this British-American "coup" (as journalist Pilger called it) was Malcolm Fraser, then leader of the federal opposition Liberal Party. Kerr named Fraser as a caretaker prime minister immediately after he sacked Whitlam.

Fraser subsequently formed essentially the same view as Whitlam about the way that Canberra's extremely close relationship with Washington fundamentally undermined Australian sovereignty. Fraser would have sensed, uneasily, the offshore influences that had delivered the position of prime minister to him.

In 2014, Fraser published the book Dangerous Allies. One reviewer described it as a polemic calling for an immediate end to Australia's paradoxical relationship with the US.

In a related interview, Fraser maintained that "we need the United States for defense, but we only need defense because of the United States". In the same interview, he argued that the biggest danger to Australia's national interest arose from maintaining its very close, strategic dependence on the US.

"I happen to believe that giving America the power to say when Australia goes to war is the most dangerous position that Australia can bear," he said.

The former prime minister also presciently argued at that time that "moving NATO east (to the) very borders of Russia was bound to be regarded as a totally hostile act".

As Fraser made his case, Australia was already well on the way to setting a record within the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development for the longest period of uninterrupted growth of any member state.

By 2020, when Australia was disturbed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this had extended to 28 years. The figures make it clear that this remarkable performance was a product, above all, of Australia's extraordinarily successful, long-term trading relationship with China. These decades proved that what was good for China, economically, was even better for Australia.

Fraser thought it was plainly wrong for successive governments in Canberra to have allowed US Marines to be stationed in Australia and for Pine Gap to be used for the US' extensive (and regularly lethal) drone program.

Both Whitlam and Fraser would have been appalled by the recent agreement to station nuclear-capable US bombers near Darwin, and the AUKUS (the grouping of Australia, the United Kingdom and the US) decision, which has committed Australia to purchasing a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines at immense and rising cost. All of this antagonistic military expenditure is primarily directed at Australia's best-ever, long-term trading partner.

Both leaders would understand, deeply, that flicking the switch to glaring Sino-hostility is plainly not in Australia's best interests but is, above all, serving the interests of the US, which is gripped by a deeply disturbed project to suppress the rise — and very success — of China.

The war hawks in Canberra and Washington still sing robustly from the same khaki song sheet. But the current Australian Labor Party government in Canberra has put away the Sinophobic megaphone, and there are some signs of deeper thinking afoot. Moreover, one member of the Five-Eyes intelligence alliance, New Zealand, has consistently shown how to maintain a firm, candid, respectful and mature relationship with Beijing.

In fact, Fraser mapped out an international political aspiration that still makes far better sense for Australia than being, as the Singaporean academic and author Kishore Mahbubani recently put it, the tip of a spear projecting Western power into Asia. The former prime minister envisioned Australia as "an independent power cooperating with other middle powers to try and build a better and safer world and to espouse the principles of the United Nations".

It is not difficult to imagine Beijing nodding in basic agreement if Canberra moved to apply this geopolitical road map to Sino-Australian relations over the coming decade and beyond. Unfortunately, it is far more difficult to imagine Washington doing the same.

The author is an adjunct professor on the faculty of law at Hong Kong University. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.