Australia, China, and Asian Regionalism: Navigating Distant Proximity

Abstract

In the coming decades, the balance of geopolitical power will shift from the West to Asia, especially China.1 Americans, who are used to their country's global superpower position, are waking up to the impact of a rising China on their lives, since the recent global financial crisis. In Australia, the significance not just of China, but of Asia, has been keenly felt during the past few decades. In 2007, East Asian countries accounted for almost fifty percent of Australia's total trade in goods and services,2 outstripping trade relations with North America or Europe. Throughout the 1990s, Australia experienced an economic boom, which was linked to China's demand for the country's natural resources such as coal and iron ore. This dependence on China has cushioned the Australian economy from the worst effects of the 2008 global financial crisis.

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IV. pasts and futures:
commentaries
Hopper, by Matt Huynh. May 2008, Ink and Digital

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navigating
regionalism
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Australia, China,
and Asian Regionalism:
Navigating Distant Proximity
Ien Ang
In the coming decades, the balance of geopolitical power will
shift from the West to Asia, especially China.1 Americans, who
are used to their country’s global superpower position, are wak-
ing up to the impact of a rising China on their lives, since the re-
cent global nancial crisis. In Australia, the signicance not just
of China, but of Asia, has been keenly felt during the past few
decades. In 2007, East Asian countries accounted for almost fty
percent of Australia’s total trade in goods and services,2 outstrip-
ping trade relations with North America or Europe. Throughout
the 1990s, Australia experienced an economic boom, which was
linked to China’s demand for the country’s natural resources
such as coal and iron ore. This dependence on China has cush-
ioned the Australian economy from the worst effects of the 2008
global nancial crisis.
Early in 2008, just before the crisis became global, a leading
economist declared in The Australian newspaper: “Australia is ne
as long as China is ne, and in 2008 China is ne.”3 By October
2008, China’s economic slowdown as a consequence of decreased
demand for Chinese products from the United States, prompted
Heather Ridout, CEO of the Australian Industry Group, to say:
“Australia is in the China lifeboat and there are some concerns
that it might be taking water.”4 But by mid-2009 it became clear
that the Australian economy had weathered the crisis much bet-
ter than other developed economies, in part because of contin-
ued Chinese demand for Australian commodities.5
Ien Ang is Distinguished Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of
Western Sydney. Her publications on the broad themes of culture, migra-
tion, and globalization include Watching Dallas (1985), Desperately Seeking
the Audience (1991), and On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and
the West (2001).
Amerasia Journal 36:2 (2010): 127-140

Amerasia Journal 2010
128
For Western sensibilities there must be something ironic about
a developed country such as Australia to be so dependent for its
prosperity on the economic situation of a non-Western giant such
as China. Yet the Australian experience may well be the fate of
many Western societies in the years to come. As the Western na-
tion-state located in closest geographical proximity to Asia, Aus-
tralia provides an excellent site for observing the impact of this
process of global transformation. Australia’s complex and ambiv-
alent relationship with Asia can give us insights into the contra-
dictory tensions that are associated with the historical decentering
of Western hegemony.6 In this essay, I go beyond the economic di-
mension of this transformation, which dominates public concern
and debate, and focus on the longer-term and complex cultural
challenges involved in Australia’s attempts to become integrated
with and within Asia, to become—as people say in Australia—
“part of Asia.”
Asianizing Australia
The so-called “Asianization” of Australia is an uneven process, yet
signifying a momentous transformation in how this nation-state
sees itself. Modern Australia was founded as a white settler colony
and conceived as a “far-ung outpost of Europe,” a white enclave
in an alien, non-white, non-European part of the world.7 Thus,
“Australia” was dened against a mythic, homogenized “Asia.”
Underpinning this self-conception was the infamous White Aus-
tralia Policy, which excluded most non-Europeans—in particular,
Asians—from migrating into the country.8
Such ofcial racism became increasingly unacceptable in the af-
termath of the Second World War with the decolonization of many
Asian nation-states which are Australia’s northern neighbors. By
the early 1970s, the White Australia Policy was ofcially abolished,
which led the way to a massive increase in immigration from Asian
countries into Australia. For example, in the wake of the Vietnam
War, thousands of Indochinese refugees were allowed to settle in
Australia, and, after the Tiananmen incident in June 1989 in China,
the government decided to let more than 40,000 Chinese students
stay in Australia and gain citizenship. Overall, migrants from a
wide range of Asian countries now make up more than a third of
new settlers to Australia each year. According to the 2006 census,
Australia’s Asian-born population is about 1.2 million, over one-
quarter of all immigrants and in a country of only 21 million in
total.9

Australia, China, and Asian Regionalism
129
But this gradual Asianization of Australia’s ethnoscape was
only part of the transformation taking place. Governments and
business leaders began to believe that to safeguard its prosper-
ity and security, Australia needed to strengthen its links with the
economies of East Asia. As the British aligned themselves with
the European Union, Australia could no longer rely on its attach-
ment to the Mother Country, Great Britain, as an anchor for its
place in the world. Instead of clinging to colonial connections,
Australia felt the urgent need to come to terms with Asia rather
than a turning away from it, as had been the case. Geography,
not history, was destiny.10
The idea that Australia has an Asian future was promoted in
the early 1990s. Then Prime Minister Paul Keating stated that in
the twenty-rst century Australia should be a country in which
“our national culture is shaped by, and helps to shape, the cul-
tures around us.”11 Public discourse in the Keating era (1991-1996)
was replete with calls for Australia to “enmesh,” “integrate,” and
“engage” with Asia: if it did not, Australians were warned, the
country would be left behind in the global economy and become
a parochial backwater. To prevent this from happening, Keating
projected the cosmopolitan image of Australia as “a multicultur-
al nation in Asia,” and national policies were shaped according-
ly. Multiculturalism became a facet of Australia’s public policy
framework. Educational policy stressed the importance of teach-
ing Asian languages in schools, and cultural exchanges with a
wide range of East and Southeast Asian countries were stepped
up in order to increase what was called “Asia literacy.”12
These attempts at reorienting Australia towards its Asian
neighbors could not hide the paradoxes of what James Rosenau
calls “distant proximity:” Australia’s radically different racial,
cultural, and historical make-up had been cause for maintaining
psychological distance rather than closeness to Asia. According
to Rosenau, distant proximities are subjective appraisals, not as-
sessments of objective reality; they concern “what people feel or
think is remote, and what they think or feel is close-at-hand.”13
Australia’s rapprochement to Asia, which was primarily moti-
vated by geopolitical, economic, and security reasons, demand-
ed nothing less than radical cultural change, but cultural change
is hard to bring about and slow to eventuate. What Australia’s
endeavor to reorient itself towards its Asian region requires was
nothing less than a reconguration of national identity: it had
to shed the colonial, Eurocentric legacy of perceiving Asia as the

Amerasia Journal 2010
130
“Far East”—still extant in Australian culture—and embrace the
fact that for Australia, Asia is the “Near North.”14
But governments have limited power to manage a top-down
turnaround in the national imagination. By 1996, a populist back-
lash against Keating’s agenda brought the conservative govern-
ment of John Howard to power. Right-wing populist politician
Pauline Hanson managed to get into parliament with a strong
anti-Asian and anti-multicultural agenda: “I believe we are in
danger of being swamped by Asians,” she declared. “They have
their own culture and religion, form ghettos, and do not assimi-
late.”15 Prime Minister Howard himself, who had expressed ob-
jections to rapid Asian immigration himself in the 1980s, was crit-
ical of the idea that Australia should become part of Asia. Speak-
ing about one of his achievements as leader of the nation in 1999,
he claimed: “We have stopped worrying about whether we are
Asian, in Asia, enmeshed in Asia or part of a mythical East Asian
hemisphere. We have got on with the job of being ourselves in
the region.”16
Economic relations between Australia and Asian countries
continued to intensify, signifying the growing signicance of the
region for global capitalism, but Howard’s decade of power (1996-
2007) did mean a reduced commitment to the Asianization agen-
da, especially in cultural terms. For example, Howard defunded
the teaching of Asian languages in schools, and reduced the gov-
ernment’s commitment to multiculturalism. It was only with the
new Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who came
to power at the end of 2007, that a more active interest in engage-
ment with Asia was renewed.
Region-building
But what is “Asia?” And who are Asians? How can they be dis-
tinguished from non-Asians? Can (white) Australians be Asians?
These questions go beyond the pragmatics of trade and economic
regionalism, and they acquire poignancy when we focus for a mo-
ment on the difculty for “Asia” to operate as the term for a com-
mon identity.17 As a geographical entity, Asia is an articial con-
struct with uncertain boundaries. Compared with Europe, Asia
is a much more fragmented region of the world. It encompasses
rich and powerful countries as well as some of the poorest coun-
tries in the world. The region’s people adhere to a wide variety of
religious and spiritual traditions, speak hundreds of different lan-
guages, and belong to countless ethnic groups and communities.

Australia, China, and Asian Regionalism
131
This does not mean, however, that “Asia” does not operate as
a powerful, if contested signier of collective identication across the
region, and this accentuates Australia’s problematic (un)belonging
to it. A common perception, not least across Asia itself, is that
Australia, as a Western and predominantly white country, cannot
claim to be Asian. “Asia” and “the West” are, from this point of
view, mutually exclusive categories; white people cannot be Asian.
This racialized construction of Asianness plays a complex and
contradictory role in the geopolitical tensions associated with the
competing designs for transnational region-building, which have
gained momentum in the past few decades.
In 1989, Australia was a key initiator of the establishment of
the Asia Pacic Economic Co-operation (APEC) to promote more
effective economic cooperation across Asia and the Pacic Rim.
APEC currently has 21 members, comprising most countries with
a coastline on the Pacic Ocean. Thus it includes not only China,
Japan, South Korea, and the ten members of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but also the United States as
well as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia itself, with other
countries including Mexico, Chile, Russia, and Papua New Guinea
joining along the way. In cultural terms, APEC successfully
managed to institutionalize a broad idea of “Asia,” here branded
as “Asia-Pacic,” and suppressing any references to particularist,
non-white, and non-Western notions of Asianness. The well-
known group photos of APEC leaders in the national costume
of the host nation of the regular summits are a visual display of
this: they stress a commonality above the differences, a unity-in-
diversity which downplays the divergent histories, interests, and
power of the constituent parties, especially between Western and
non-Western partners.18
But the initial proposal for APEC was opposed by the
countries of ASEAN, in particular by former Malaysian Prime
Minister Mathathir Mohamad, who instead proposed an East
Asia Economic Caucus which would only be open for “real” Asian
nations and would exclude countries considered non-Asian. The
plan was opposed and criticized as a “caucus without Caucasians”
by the U.S., who wished to downplay any fault line between
Asia and the West in the construction of the region.19 Although
Mathathir’s “Asians-only” design for the region lost out to the
Western-led APEC in the early 1990s, the idea of a more specic
East Asian regionalism has gained momentum since the Asian
economic crisis of 1997, which affected many national economies

Amerasia Journal 2010
132
across the region. It has been institutionalized in the so-called
ASEAN+3 forum, which brings together the ten ASEAN states
and China, Japan, and South Korea.
This increased emphasis on “East Asia” as the common sig-
nier for cooperative region-building was motivated by a desire
to reduce Asian dependence on Western-dominated nancial in-
stitutions such as the International Monetary Fund and on the
perceived ineffectiveness of APEC. An important motive for this
new drive toward East Asian regionalism was a shared sense of
humiliation and resentment against the West’s slow response to
the 1997 economic crisis.20 By contrast, China extended generous
nancial support to Thailand and Indonesia during the crisis, en-
hancing its stature as a model of economic stability and respon-
sible leadership.21 As Indonesian trade minister Mari Pangestu
observed in 2004: “The growth of China led to a growing realiza-
tion that the region could form a large and dynamic economic
bloc. . .and seek a more effective voice in the global arena hith-
erto dominated by Western interests.”22
This interest in East Asian region-building is based at least in
part on the reproduction of the master-division of “Asia” and the
“West.” In this dichotomy, Australia is placed rmly within the sec-
ond camp. When Australia requested participation in the 2005 East
Asian Summit, Mahathir repeated his acerbic anti-Australian views,
arguing that Australia is “some sort of transplant from another re-
gion.”23 In the end, diplomacy won and Australia now participates
in the Summit meetings. However, Mahathir’s rantings resonate
with the lingering resentment of Western hegemony throughout the
non-Western world. Complaints about white supremacy and West-
ern arrogance, and in the Australian case, echoes of the White Aus-
tralia Policy, are never far below the surface. They feed feelings of
“us” (Asians) versus “them” (Westerners) which can be mobilized
whenever particular global events invite a local response.
One example is the international newspaper coverage of the
clashes between pro-Tibet and pro-China protesters during the
Olympic torch relay in April 2008. A perusal of Asian newspa-
pers such as The Straits Times (Singapore), The Bangkok Post, and
The Times of India shows that they all provided commentary with
careful consideration of the different sides. But there was also
criticism of what was perceived as Western media bias against
China. These countries positioned themselves as Asian nations
within the Asian region, often emphasising the need to maintain
good relations with their Asian neighbours and questioning the

Australia, China, and Asian Regionalism
133
West’s moral authority to lecture the rest of the world, China in-
cluded, about human rights. In this coverage, a clear line be-
tween Asia and the West was drawn.
By contrast, Australian media tended to communicate from a
Western standpoint, and were preoccupied with Chinese human
rights abuses in Tibet and the alleged involvement of the Chi-
nese government in whipping up pro-Chinese patriotism among
overseas Chinese to defend the torch relay. A strong distrust of
China framed Australian news coverage of these events, in line
with the dominant Western media worldwide. Here, China was
positioned as the bad other, representative of an “Asia” that was
denitely not “us.”
But with China now so essential for its economy, Australia
must be careful not to antagonize China too much. Between hu-
man rights and economic prosperity, where does Australia stand?
And how can Australia overcome its contradictory and ambiva-
lent relationship with Asia more broadly? It is here where the
role of Kevin Rudd, who was Prime Minister from November
2007 until his recent 2010 ouster, is so illuminating.
A Question of Leadership?
If the election of Barack Obama as the rst black President of
the United States marked an epochal breakthrough signifying a
waning of whiteness in twenty-rst century Western hegemo-
nies, Kevin Rudd’s rise to power signalled a different, but telling
case in the same development. The most intriguing aspect about
Rudd is that he is the rst and only Western leader who speaks
uent Chinese. He has a degree in Chinese history and was a
diplomat in Beijing.
Rudd’s rst world tour as Australia’s new leader in early April
2008 coincided with the uprising in Tibet. As the issue of human
rights and the possibility of boycotting the Beijing Olympics was
talked about among Western leaders, many wondered whether
Rudd would put Tibet on the agenda during his visit to China.
Rudd had to walk a diplomatic tightrope, and by all accounts, he
succeeded. His biggest public triumph was a speech, delivered in
Mandarin, to students at Beida University, where he said: “Some
have called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics Games. . .I do not
agree. But we also believe it is necessary to recognize that there
are signicant human rights problems in Tibet. As a long-standing
friend of China, I intend to have a straightforward discussion with
China’s leaders on this.” Drawing on his knowledge of Chinese

Amerasia Journal 2010
134
language and history, Rudd used the powerful and meaning-
laden Chinese word zhengyou to describe himself. As China expert
Geremie Barmé explains, a zhengyou is a true friend who dares
to disagree, “a partner who sees beyond immediate benet to
the broader and rm basis for continuing, profound and sincere
friendship.”24 Rudd understood that speaking to the Chinese as a
zhengyou was a culturally sensitive way of expressing one’s point
of view, and was therefore more likely to be heard.
Responses in Australia and around the world were full of ad-
miration. Some commentators suggested that, with Rudd, Aus-
tralia was well placed “to assert a genuine middleman role [be-
tween the two most powerful nations of the world, China and the
United States], given the respect in which it is held in Beijing and
Washington.”25 In an interview with Time magazine, Rudd him-
self conrmed his belief that Australia could be a “creative mid-
dle-power diplomacy [that is] friends of all, enemy of none.”26
However, we should not overestimate Australia’s capacity
to inuence world affairs, nor the benet of Rudd’s linguistic
skills to upscale Australia’s standing in Asia. For example, while
Rudd’s criticism of China’s human rights record hit the head-
lines globally, responses were muted within China. More impor-
tantly, Rudd’s China performance played out differently across
other parts of Asia. The Japanese were concerned that China had
moved to the forefront of Australia’s foreign policy focus at the
expense of Japan. Reecting on Australia’s relative neglect of the
other up-and-coming economic giant, one Indian analyst conclud-
ed: “China, China, China, China and more China was the recur-
ring theme of his speeches.”27 As political commentator Sheridan
observed, “the Australian debate often does not understand that
China is not Asia and Asia is not just China. Speaking Mandarin
is sweet in Beijing but cuts you absolutely no ice in New Delhi,
Tokyo, Jakarta, or Bangkok.”28 The sensitive relationships with
Japan and Indonesia, in particular, needed careful diplomatic at-
tention and Rudd was forced to visit these two countries quickly
to counter Asian perceptions that Australian foreign policy was
becoming increasingly Sino-centric.29 In response, the Rudd gov-
ernment sent out mixed messages to China and the region. On
the one hand, Rudd quickly initiated an ambitious proposal to
establish a comprehensive “Asia Pacic Community,” modelled
after the European Union, which would transcend the limited fo-
cus of existing regional bodies such as ASEAN and APEC.30 On
the other, Rudd’s cautious, if not ambivalent handling of tensions

Australia, China, and Asian Regionalism
135
around Chinese investments in Australian resource companies
and the rise of China’s military power invited accusations of re-
awakening “yellow peril” paranoia and hints of racism.31
Rudd’s reign proved remarkably short-lived, as most of his
reform initiatives fell at and led to a rapid decline in his popu-
larity. In June 2010, he was toppled as Prime Minister by his dep-
uty, Julia Gillard. One of the rst foreign affairs announcements
of the new Prime Minister was that she would abandon Rudd’s
concept of an Asia Pacic Community, arguing that it had not
much support across the region.32
What is highlighted here are the enormous complexities
and sensitivities involved in the process of transnational re-
gion-building in a world of divergent and competing interests,
perspectives, fears, and desires. Subject to what Rosenau calls
“fragmegrative” global dynamics, Australia’s geopolitical effort
to become “part of Asia” is contradictory and contentious due to
distant proximities beyond the control of governments, let alone
individual leaders.33
Regional Cultural Flows
We can shed a different light on these issues by going beyond
the ofcial world of regional institutions and international rela-
tions. Just as signicant for the emergence of “Asia” as a region-
al entity are the more informal processes of transnational ow
that actualize social interactions and cultural interconnections
across the region. Whether or not Australia is part of Asia, and
how, is not a question of government decree, nor will it be real-
ized solely by economic exchange and trade relations. In a more
comprehensive way, it would grow out of the complex web of
actual interconnections between Australia and different parts of
Asia through the myriad human interactions which make soci-
eties work: from trade to education, from tourism to research
collaborations, from artistic exchanges to social activism. And
in this regard, Australia’s (un)belonging to Asia is at best patchy
and partial.
A revealing illustration of this is the circulation of Asian pop
culture. Of course, there are Australian fans of Japanese man-
ga or Hong Kong kung fu movies, for example, but Asian pop
culture is never more than a small, sub-cultural niche market. A
case in point was the visit of popular Korean hip-hop performer
and singer Rain to Sydney in 2007. Rain, who has made some
efforts to expand his pan-Asian success into the West through a

Amerasia Journal 2010
136
world tour that incorporated concerts in Australia and America,
attracted an overwhelmingly Asian crowd to his Sydney con-
cert, mostly young women of Asian diasporic backgrounds, but
hardly managed to ll the arena despite a ferocious promotion
campaign. As a Sydney Morning Herald blog reported:
If it wasn’t for the throng of teenage girls waiting anxiously
outside the Stamford Hotel in Double Bay yesterday, the local
citizenry probably would not have given the Korean megastar
Rain a second glance. Despite being one of the biggest stars of
Asia, and therefore the world, the hip-hop performer Rain. . .
seems to have slipped under the radar for most of us.34
As this case illustrates, there is a major disconnect between main-
stream Australia and Asia in terms of popular culture: they be-
long to two entirely separate cultural spheres. While youth in
East Asia are becoming increasingly interconnected through the
cultural proximity of a shared popular culture, popular culture
in Australia generally remains removed from Asian contribu-
tions, maintaining its outward gaze stubbornly focused on the
celebrities in metropolitan centers of the West (e.g. London and
Hollywood).
To pursue the example of Rain and Korean diasporic culture
further, East Asia has been swept by a so-called Korean Wave
(Hallyu) of enthusiasm for Korean pop culture (soap operas, movies,
Internet games, fashion and popular music), so much so that the
Korean government and the Korea National Tourism Organization
now exploit Hallyu to promote Korea as “the hub of Asian culture
and tourism.” Even Japan, which has been an exporter of popular
culture into Asia throughout the 1990s, has caught Hallyu fever,
and in China, too, Korean pop culture has reached phenomenal
popularity in recent years. As Jian Cai observes: “As globalization
develops and cultural exchanges become more and more frequent,
Asia is no longer dominated by American popular culture. Asians
are choosing things that are more culturally similar. They choose
Korean entertainment because it contains Asian values and senti-
ments.”35
These developments suggest that a process of regionaliza-
tion is going on at the level of popular culture, articulating a
heightened sense of collective style, taste, and regional conscious-
ness that has spread across East and Southeast Asia, but not to
Australia. Pop culture creates a region-wide cultural sphere in
Asia, inducing a common sense of popular, urban and decid-

Australia, China, and Asian Regionalism
137
edly modern Asian identity. What is articulated in this dynamic,
vibrant, and energetic popular culture is a hybrid experience of
urban modernity that is both like and unlike Western cultural
modernity, blending local and global cultural elements in inno-
vative mixtures.36 On the whole, though, this Asian popular cul-
ture does not cross over to Australian mediascapes. For instance,
Korean soap operas are not on Australian TV screens, nor does
Asian pop music ever reach mainstream popularity.
But the story is not only one of cultural disconnect; it is also
one of social entanglement caused by cross-regional mobility.
We can return here to the story of Asian migration into Austra-
lia. The proportion of Australia’s resident population born in
Asia increased from 1.1 percent in 1976 to 5.5 percent in 2001,
and according to the 2006 Australian census, almost 1.7 million
or almost seven percent of the Australian population identify as
having Asian ancestry.37 This compares with Asian Americans
making up an estimate of ve percent of the total U.S. population
as of 2007.38
Although these statistics do not look spectacular, the rise has
been exponential in the last few decades, and there’s no denying
that people of Asian backgrounds are already making a qualita-
tive difference in Australian society and culture. For example,
Asians are heavily represented in business and the professions,
and tend to perform above average in the education system (a
trend similar to the United States, where Asian-Americans have
been dubbed “the model minority”). Some of Australia’s most
celebrated chefs are Asian Australian, such as Chinese-Austra-
lian Kylie Kwong and Japanese-born Tetsuya Wakuda. Aus-
tralians of Asian descent are also becoming increasingly visible
in high ofce. For example, Penny Wong, Minister for Climate
Change in the Rudd and Gillard administrations, is of Malaysian
Chinese descent. People like Wong are comfortably both Asian
and Australian, exemplifying the effect of hybridity as a cultural
force that unsettles the dominant perception that the two catego-
ries are mutually exclusive, instead highlighting the infusion of
Asianness into Australian national identity.39
Conclusion
In today’s globalized world, nation-states depend increasingly
on their linkages and relations with other nation-states, especial-
ly those in their own world region. For Australia, this has meant
a need to come to terms with its geographical location in the Asia

Amerasia Journal 2010
138
Pacic region, distant from its “natural” historical and cultural
associates in Europe and North America. Australia has needed
to reinvent itself as a part of Asia. However, “Asia” is a uid and
complex regional space with uncertain and contested boundar-
ies. Its provisional and evolving coming together as an entity is
shaped by many layers of cross-border ows and multifarious
interconnections, as well as contesting political designs and insti-
tutional constructs. In the face of complex plays of power, desire
and interest, Australia is sometimes already part of Asia; at other
times, it is not at all, and may never be. Sometimes cultural, his-
torical, and racial differences matter, and made to matter deeply,
while sometimes such differences are easily and pragmatically
overcome, eroding the reigning dichotomy of “Asia” and the
“West” in small but signicant ways. For the time being, Austra-
lia both is and is not part of Asia.
Notes
1. See e.g. Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: Norton,
2008); Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle
Kingdom and the End of the Western World (London: Allen Lane, 2009).
2. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia’s Trade with East Asia
2007 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2008): 1.
3. Chris Richardson, Access Economics Director, quoted in Mike Steketee,
“Soft Landing,” The Weekend Australian, March 29-30, 2008.
4. Heather Ridout, quoted in Deborah Snow, “Industry parrots Rudd’s
sermon on global crisis,” Sydney Morning Herald, October 18, 2008.
5. “Australia dodges recession after surprising growth,” The China Post, June
4, 2009.
6. See e.g. Andre Gunder Frank, Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998); Minqi Li, The Rise of China and the
Demise of the Capitalist World Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2008).
7. See e.g. Raymond Evans, Clive Moore, Kay Saunders, and Bruce Jamison,
1901: Our Future’s Past (Sydney: MacMillan, 1997).
8. See Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2001): Chapter 7. Importantly, the White Australia Policy
was also internally aimed at “whitewashing” the continent from its black
Aboriginal population, which in the early twentieth century was widely
considered “a dying race.” A connection can be made between Austra-
lian/Aboriginal and Australian/Asian relations through the lens of early-
twentieth-century racial politics, which was then in the grip of the myth
of white superiority. See Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the
Global Colour Line (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
9. Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, “Migration in the Asia-Pacic Region,”
Migration Information Source, July 2009, available online at http://www.

Australia, China, and Asian Regionalism
139
migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=733 (accessed July 28,
2009).
10. A seminal government report in this regard was Ross Garnaut, Australia
and the North East Ascendancy (Canberra: Australian Government Publish-
ing Service, 1989).
11. Greg Sheridan, Living with Dragons: Australia Confronts Its Asian Destiny
(St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1995): xix.
12. For a searching book-length exploration of these challenges, see Stephen
FitzGerald, Is Australia an Asian Country? (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997).
See also Ien Ang and Jon Stratton, “Asianing Australia: Notes Toward A
Critical Transnationalism in Cultural Studies,” Cultural Studies 10:1 (1996):
16-36.
13. James Rosenau, Distant Proximities: Dynamics Beyond Globalization (Princ-
eton: Princeton UP, 2003): 6.
14. David Goldsworthy and Peter Edwards (eds.), Facing North: A Century of
Australian Engagement with Asia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press
and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2003); J.V. de Cruz and
William Steele, Australia’s Ambivalence Towards Asia: Politics, Neo/Post-Co-
lonialism, and Fact/Fiction (Clayton: Monash Asia Institute, 2003).
15. Pauline Hanson, Maiden Speech in Federal Parliament, September 10, 1996.
16. John Howard, House of Representatives, Hansard, September 21, 1999: 7620.
17. See Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of
Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997): 55.
18. See Louise Edwards and Mina Roces, “Trans-national Flows and the Pol-
itics of Dress in Asia and the Americas,” Roces and Edwards, eds., The
Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press,
2007): 1-18.
19. Mohan Malik, “The East Asia Summit: More Discord than Accord,” Yale
Global Online, December 20, 2005.
20. David Capie, “Rival Regions? East Asian Regionalism and Its Challenge
to the Asia-Pacic” in Jim Rolfe, ed., The Asia-Pacic: A Region in Transition
(Honolulu: Asia Pacic Center for Security Studies, 2004): 149-165.
21. Hugh de Santis, “The Dragon and the Tigers: China and Asian Regionalism,”
World Policy Journal 22:2 (2005): 23-36
22. Louise Williams, “We need to be part of Asia’s makeover,” Sydney Morning
Herald, June 28, 2004.
23. Quoted on The World Today, ABC Local Radio, October 30, 2003.
24. Geremie Barmé, “Rudd rewrites the roles of engagement,” The Sydney
Morning Herald, April 12-13, 2008.
25. “Australia nds new role as Sino-US matchmaker,” South China Morning
Post, February 26, 2008.
26. Hannah Beech, “Mr. World: Kevin Rudd,” Time, July 13, 2009.
27. B. Raman,“Kevin Rudd: All the Way with China,” South Asia Analysis
Group, Paper no 2680, April 24, 2008.

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28. Greg Sheridan, “Make Amends for Asia Blunder,” The Australian, May 10,
2008.
29. Nick Squires, “Enter the Dragon: Canberra is Walking a Tightrope Between
Lucrative Trade with China and Beijing’s Ever Growing Political Inuence,”
South China Morning Post, May 12, 2008.
30. Kevin Rudd, “It’s Time to Build an Asia Pacic Community,” Address to
the Asia Society AustralAsia Centre, Sydney, June 4, 2008.
31. John Garnaut, “How we got China so wrong,” The Age, July 13, 2009; Ber-
nard Kean, “Hostility to China Investment Borders on Racism,” crickey.
com.au, July 21, 2009.
32. Peter Hartcher, “Gillard Rejects Rudd’s Asia Vision,” Sydney Morning
Herald, July 5, 2010.
33. The term “fragmegration” has been coined by Rosenau (see footnote 12)
to suggest the pervasive interaction between fragmenting and integrating
dynamics unfolding at every level in the contemporary globalized world.
34. Available online at http://blogs.smh.com.au/sit/archives/2007/04/in_
town_rain_drops_in_but_hard.html
35. “China’s rst taste of the Korean Wave,” available online at http://www.
korea.net/news/news/newsView.asp?serial_no=20080811001&part=115
&SearchDay=&source=
36. Koichi Iwabuchi, Stephen Muecke and Mandy Thomas, eds., Rogue Flows:
Trans-Asian Cultural Trafc (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press,
2004); Doobo Shim, “Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in
Asia,” Media, Culture & Society 28:1 (2006): 25-44.
37. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Census 2006.
38. “Asian American Population Surpasses 15 million,” AsianWeek, May 1,
2008.
39. I discuss the complexities of hybridity in relation to Asian Australian
identities in On Not Speaking Chinese.