East Asia is key to Australia's survival

East Asia is key to Australia's survival

Stephen FitzGerald argues that coming to terms with its Asian future is perhaps the greatest challenge yet faced by Australia, but one which Australians and their leaders have refused to do thus far.

SINGAPORE: The March 1996 ASEM Meeting was a remarkable event, for East Asia and for Australia. For the former, it was a meeting multilateral in form but bilateral in essence, a meeting on equal terms with the states of the European Union. For Australia, it had a different significance. ASEM had required East Asia to begin to define itself as a region, and because definition was difficult, it came down to definition by exclusion. Australia applied for inclusion in ASEM as part of the Asian side, but was excluded.

Whether Australia is subsequently included in ASEM or not, the portents of this exclusion are enormous: that part of the world which is completely dominant in Australia's economic, immigration, tourism, and education flows, and in political and cultural influence in Australia's regional habitat, was closed to Australia politically. To be denied participation in the critical political councils of the region which dominates us economically is comparable to a colonial status for Australia. Threatening to Australia's capacity to determine its own future in the short term, it will, if it persists into the longer term, diminish our independence and extinguish some defining features of Australian society.

Yet the challenge for Australia is much more extensive than inclusion or exclusion in international councils. The challenge for Australia is to come to terms properly with a region on which it will depend increasingly in the future, but with which it shares few cultural commonalities. This is not a matter of form or comfort: it is a matter of survival.

* Australia and its region, the need for debate:

It is an enormous issue for Australian society, but it has been barely debated in mainstream public discussion over these past two decades in which our circumstances have changed so much as to make Asia the most important fact in our international relations. I mean debated. There have been policy statements of course, there has been assertion and declamation, skepticism, even opposition. But not anything which could be described as intellectual debate. Any discussion that has occurred has been almost entirely within the terms and definitions set by governments, of both sides of politics, which have been for the most part narrow and near-sighted.

An example is trade. When Australia finally started to make up its mind in the mid-1980s that its fortunes were somehow tied up in Asia, it was a decision driven by material concerns. It was a decision that was easy to "sell", in part because it was intellectually and emotionally lazy. It is not and will never be enough to be interested in Asia only because that is where our trade links lie. Australia's future in Asia needs to be thought about, intellectualized, in all of its aspects: what Australia needs to do, and what effect this future will have on Australian society.

* A powerful East Asia: what place for Australia?

The first step we need to take is to focus on a time-frame beginning now and extending over about 30 years, when Australia's regional habitat will come to be dominated by confident, assertive, "Asianized" East Asian states under the pervasive influence of China. The United States will not be calling the shots. China will. The U.S. will still be a major power, but the balance is changing already, and the influence of China on the rest of East Asia and on Australia will intensify. I am not arguing that China should be seen as militarily threatening. Without acquiring one more weapon or putting one soldier outside its own territory, and even in the most benign mode, it will have enormous influence on all of us, on our external environment, but inevitably domestically. And it will use that influence, as all countries do.

* This makes East Asia no longer a matter of choice for Australia. In a sense, the question "Is Australia an Asian Country?" will be answered by East Asia, not by Australia. The decision about Australian participation is, whatever we think, not ours to make. East Asian states will make the definitions and judge whether Australia will be accepted as part of their club. This is new for Australia, a country that has previously been able to assume acceptance by the world's dominant powers. At the same time, Australians have felt that Asia was something that we could choose: how to deal with it, and where we found our place in it. ASEM brought us face to face with the fact that at least one answer to the question is that, by definition of the Asian side in ASEM, Australia was not an Asian country. The region which accounts for two thirds of our trade and is preponderant in most of our external relations was not in this important context prepared to accept us.

* Coming to terms with our region:

In another sense, there needs to be an Australian answer to the question "Is Australia an Asian Country?". Australian society needs to answer this strongly in the affirmative if it is going to come to terms with its Asian future. I believe Australia has already traveled a remarkable distance towards becoming an Asian country. Asian immigration and the social harmony of migrant settlement is one of the great success stories of modern Australia. Australian opinion polls have often shown negative views about immigration, but the remarkably high rates of intermarriage tell a different story, as does the general public acceptance of Asian people and influences at the personal level, in mainstream Australia, without serious incident. In education, with our blueprints for the study of Asia and Asian languages, in our trade and investment, in our tourism, and many other facets of Australian life, we are now as a community more explicitly oriented to Asia than many in Asia who would claim this distinction for their own societies. And we have been a good regional citizen for half a century, sharing our ideas and technology and opening our education to participation by people who now dot the regional landscape and in some places dominate the professions. In the totality of these things, our society has done much to make the adjustment to Asia and made us something of an Asian country.

For Australia, coming to terms with its Asian future will naturally place society and identity under pressure. The emergence of the race issue in Australia is a part of this and is, first and foremost, a domestic, human and moral issue. It is tragic for Australia if even one person of Asian or Aboriginal ethnicity suffers one physical or verbal attack as a result. On this, we need leadership which is quick and decisive in taking a commanding position on such matters. The rejection of racism must be sincere: it cannot be that we speak out only because it is affecting trade or tourism. Why might it affect trade? Because trade is done by people. The damage which is done to relations is done to people, and not to statistics, and it is people also who do politics, and who make decisions, including about us. Sadly, most of the damage that has been done by the race issue has been done to Asians in Australia who have rejoiced in their Australian identity, and to our friends and supporters in Asia, the people who support us and want us in the Asia club.

The Asia-Australia Institute, which I chair, is dedicated to seeing Australia included in the Asia club, a job that has two parts. One aspect is working in the region, with Asian partners, to develop an intellectual infrastructure for a regional community in which Australia can be an accepted, equal and fully participating constituent. The other aspect is to work within Australia, to help Australian society prepare for its Asian future.

* The "Australianization" of Australia:

This is also a tough question. Let us be optimistic and assume that Australia is included in a future East Asian Community. There still remains a question of whether Australian society can survive in an East Asian future. One of the reasons we need to debate the questions of our engagement with Asia is that those things about Australia's present and future international circumstances which are entirely new, and for us unknown, raise questions about the continuation of this society as we know it now. Those characteristics which make this one of the most open, tolerant, free, democratic, humanist and pluralist societies on earth, should still be here and still be as strong in these respects in the future. The beach on which we wash up on in the 2020s may not be full of unrelieved good. The future requires of us on one hand a commitment to accommodate a dominant world which is culturally totally different, yet without compromising what makes this distinctly Australian democratic society. This is a watershed in our history and we have to face these questions.

In coming to terms with our Asian future, there is no question of wanting or needing to abandon these dimensions of Australia. They are our strength. What we have to do is acquire an additional, Asian dimension, and get it right - intellectually, culturally and politically. I know of no Australian seriously engaged in the pursuit of deeper engagement with Asia who is not deeply committed to our political culture. I also know of no Australian involved seriously in this endeavor who is not a small "n" nationalist. This is partly why I refer to this Asian dimension of the Australian search for identity as the "Australianization of Australia". We have to Australianize ourselves, becoming confident with who we are and how we address the world, and, as part of this Australianization, "Asianize" ourselves, in ways that do not compromise Australia.

Part of the task of Australianisation will be the acquisition of Asian literacy by Australians. Australian leaders will have to become specialists with specialist skills for dealing with dominant powers whose history and cultures, languages, political philosophies, values and ideas, they have not previously studied in depth, and whose ideas about relations between states may also be different. Because leaders in Asia have these skills in respect of us, and this puts us at a disadvantage: we are not giving ourselves an even chance. We have to start now to be curious about Asia itself. Intellectually equipped with what we learn from that, we will be able to address in an informed way where the engagement will be good for us and where it will not, where compromise is permissible, and where it is the first step on a dangerous slope which leads to compromise of things fundamental.

I believe the prospects for Australia are exciting beyond imagination. But Australianisation will not just happen. To get there we have to wrestle with the two sides of our character. We have to start to be intelligent, intellectual, forward-thinking and long-term, and not lazy, about ourselves, our values, our institutions, or our region. We have to take up on our own what is really hard about this, and not clutch at protectors or a white man's world now gone or a past which cannot be retrieved. We have to be a nation of bilingualists, of cultural proteans, literate in Asia and in much else besides. We have to face hard choices and make hard decisions about education and ethics and the economism that eats at our humanism. We have to be Australian and not European, we have to be quiet not strident, we have to learn humility, and to listen in silence. We have to care intensely about the future and survival of this democracy, one of the oldest in the world, and the preservation of the innate democratic instinct of its people. We have to find our pilgrim soul.

Professor Stephen FitzGerald is Chairman of the influential Asia-Australia Institute and member of the Trends International Advisory Committee. He is a China scholar and a former Australian Ambassador to China. He based the above article on his recent book Is Australia an Asian country? published by Allen & Unwin, Sydney, Australia.