Australian governments’ policy conundrum: ambivalence on China and certainty on Japan

Abstract

With the rise of China and it displacing Japan as Australia's major trading partner, successive Australian governments have displayed a policy conundrum: where China is regarded with ambivalence, Japan is treated as Australia's best friend in Asia with enhanced defence and diplomatic ties. This paper examines the question of how the policy conundrum has arisen in terms of issues concerning trade and human rights and Sino–Japan relations, arguing that the inconsistency in approach is fundamentally ontological rather than one of international security. Through an analysis of respective governments’ positions over the past twenty years, this paper contends that the conundrum of Australian governments’ policy in relation to China comes from deep-seated Eurocentric versions of history that locates the West over and above the rest. In performativity, this policy is two-fold: it prioritises ‘diplomatic trade’ with China over human rights; and it asserts ‘value diplomacy’ in Sino–Japan relations. Japan is depicted as Australia's democratic ally and China as the threatening anachronistic other. These two distinctively contradicting positions, one economic growth first and the other ‘value’ first, bespeak an ambivalence and inconsistency that plagues Australian governments’ foreign policy towards China.