There is a grim-humoured joke in Sinology circles that the person who goes to China for a week usually writes a best-selling tell-all book and the person who goes for a month might write an article that, if they’re the rare mix of humble, astute and lucky, might contain some interesting observations. The real scholar of China will struggle to write anything at all.
This is because the China story, described this week by the ABC’s Director of News Gavin Morris as ‘the story of our times’, defies simplistic renderings, however much a significant part of Australian-based commentary masquerades as such. The rapid revolutions of the modern media cycle do not permit much nuance or lengthy historically informed pieces.
Thus it is in the Australia-China discourse we get effectively those who are either 'China hawks' (or 'dragon-slayers'), like the self-proclaimed wolverines pack led by government parliamentarians Andrew Hastie, Tim Smith and James Patterson while others like Andrew Twiggy Forrest are more conciliatory for seemingly transactional reasons and thereby constitute 'panda huggers'.
It is so very vital that Australians learn about China from individuals who seek to tread a more nuanced and informed middle line, with on the ground experience and linguistic and cultural expertise. This is why this week’s rapid and dramatic evacuation from China of the two last officially accredited journalists from Australian news agencies is a further body blow to the Australia-China relationship, and affects our capacity to understand how each other’s country and culture operates.
There are of course still highly informed Australians living and working in China beyond the confines of our efficient and professional diplomatic corps, as for instance the former ABC correspondent and Club Secretary of the Beijing Bombers Aussie Rules Club Stephen McDonell (now BBC China correspondent), but the retreat of Australian news agencies means that for the first time in almost five decades the Australian fourth estate is not officially represented or reporting from China.
At such a momentous juncture in the Australia-China relationship it is worthwhile casting an eye over the evolutionary history of the modern Australia-China relationship, which began even before our own Federation. One of the earliest on-the-ground correspondents was the enigmatic Dr George Ernest Morrison (after whom the prestigious Australian National University’s Morrison Lecture series is named) who was The Times correspondent in Beijing from 1897 to 1912 and then was a political adviser to the new Chinese state, including helping to prepare its submissions to the Paris Peace Conference after World War One.
'It is this history of almost 50 years of informed commentary that has now been placed into a form of deep freeze.'
Later noted correspondents included George Johnstone, better known for his My Brother Jack trilogy, although in 1941 he became Australia’s first credited war correspondent during World War Two and filed many reports from China’s southwest. The often-horrific sights he saw during the years of the Second Sino-Japanese War led to two China-based works, the novel The Far Road (1960) and Journey through Tomorrow (1947) a series of reflections based on his dispatches from India, China, Tibet, Burma and Japan.
The 1940s were also the first years that Australia opened its own legation in China, founding the first post in 1941 in the inland city of Chongqing. The first ambassador was not Stephen FitzGerald, as is often assumed, but rather Frederic Eggleston who held the position from 1941 until 1946, during the war years. The legation was subsequently moved to Nanjing in 1946 where it remained until 1949. Australia’s diplomatic representative was withdrawn from China after the victory of the Communist Party’s Red Army over the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek, and the post was effectively left vacant, although the Republic of China maintained its own embassy in Australia until 1972.
For the next 17 years Australia did not have an official relationship with either the newly established People’s Republic or the exiled republican government in Taiwan. This changed in 1966 when the Holt government established an embassy in Taipei, which remained opened until the early 1970s, although Prime Minister Gough Whitlam transferred formal recognition of the government of China from Taipei’s Nationalist to the Communists in Beijing in 1972. The new Australian embassy was then opened in Beijing in 1973 with Stephen FitzGerald appointed ambassador.
Since then some of the Australia’s most well known China commentators have worked as journalists, academics, business representatives, cultural counsellors and diplomats, and often several of these positions over these years. Such a roll call would include everyone from Jocelyn Chey to Ross Garnaut, Carrillo Gantner to Kevin Rudd and Geoff Raby, to name only a few of the older eminences.
It is this history of almost 50 years of informed commentary that has now been placed into a form of deep freeze. The evacuations this week will obviously not prevent continued discussion about China’s realities by Australian-based experts and former journalists like the Lowy Institute’s Richard McGregor, or the hosts of the excellent Little Red Podcast, Graeme Smith and Louisa Lim, but the lack of in-country reporting adds yet a further challenge to the ongoing management of Australia’s relationship with such an important global power.
Dr Jeremy Clarke, PhD, is the founding director of Sino-Immersions Pty Ltd, a China consulting company, and a Visiting Fellow in the Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University.
Main image: Plaque at first Australian embassy in China (Supplied)