China's cupcakes and Australia's Asia fear

I couldn't be bothered to read the 'new' direction because it all sounded so very, well, rehearsed and, well, familiar as well as, well, trite, when I heard Fran blathering on about it with 'someone' the other day. Let's take schools as a good starting point. More fiddling for no real good purpose within schools from the Commonwealth, that will be undone by the next mob in. As I recall, foreign languages were in with the ALP some years ago, then out with Howard and his drones, now Gillard has discovered them again. Big deal. The problem I noticed when my daughters, who all did Mandarin, were at school was that not only were the primary schools not treating it seriously but neither did most parents, who could see no reason to learn 'Chink' or anything else for that matter. The high school 'preferred' German, a real world language, eh? There is no point filling papers with 'good ideas' unless the population has it explained to them that there is a good point to learning foreign languages, so the parents do not undermine the marginal efforts of the schools, the teachers and the 'national interest'. There's a reason so many speak English around the world - those people speak extra languages beyond their own native tongue.

Where to begin? Is it to articulate the goal we as a nation are to aim for in our relationships with the countries of Asia? Or is it more important to make a fearless and moral inventory of what our current position and attitudes are? I think the latter is the more important question. If our current attitude is one of distain and our position is lack of trust, (or whatever the inventory throws up), then the change has to begin with us. I believe there is no more important subject than social psychology. Governments and community leaders need to take a good look at the social forces in Australia that are relatively unalterable by single individuals. On a recent trip to Indonesia with a group of Australians (not all Australian born) I was disappointed to find that the prevailing attitude was: "You can't trust them, you know. They are all smiles to your face but they are just out to take advantage of you." I doubt if learning Indonesian would have altered the attitude of such people one little bit.

It is good to start by learning about our own history. This author would damn Paul Keating with slighting remarks about his views of Asia, not wanting to recognise that Keating was being ironic in his descriptions of Asia as a place we fly over to Europe. Keating is the PM who drove the push into Asia. It is due to Keating that articles like this are even being written in 2012. Keating would more than agree with the Cupcake Thesis, but so would Kevin Rudd and many others in the only party that has made this an issue, historically. Keating’s push into Asia had a enormous impact on Australian cultural life. Although we read about our friend the US in the media, and about Europe, the Australian cultural inheritance of Europe has been sidelined since Keating, the funding has gone elsewhere, and this in itself is an issue not properly considered by the cultural commentators. A whole generation of Australians, including the author of the above article, were brought up with a Eurocentric view of Australia and the world, only to find that Asia is where the action is. This division in Australia’s understanding of the world has much to do with its present cultural conflicts, uncertainty and malaise. Also, it thinks culture comes from outside when in fact Australia we are standing in it. Keating, for example, was gung-ho for Asia, but spent the evenings winding his Empire clocks and listening to Mahler.He also gave the Redfern Speech.

Fr Michael Kelly SJ,"Without an informed view, fear wins". **************************** On the other hand, with a PRE-formed view, every piece of information received is filtered and interpreted, or even distorted, to fit in with the pre-fomed view. Often the greatest obstacle to finding Truth is to be convinced that we already know it. Many Australians think that our Judeo-Christian heritage is the acme of cultural and religious expression, and that all others should be subordinated to it. There is a lot we should learn from the spirit of Fr Matteo Ricci,S.J.

"Where is the enablement?" This is surely the crucial question. But it is also a vital question for our local Catholic Church. While we increasingly accept priests ordained in Asia I don't see any evidence of our bishops citing papers of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conference (FABC) as authoritative guides to where our theological direction. Some of the most vital recent theology comes from Asia but we remain embedded in the past. We should be engaged in a dialogue with the Asian church to "enable" us to grow into the Catholic church we claim to be.

We desperately need to move beyond the "same old practices" that jeopardise our chances to turn aspirations about Australia in the Asian century into practical commitments. I wrote about imaginings of Asia in the 1890s and 1990s, looking at government via APEC, business, the work of Australian architects in Asia, and public imaginings mainly through media representations. Paul Keating used to berate Australia’s dark forces of racism among the general population. But our imaginings were stratified between government and business elites, who were meeting with, and learning about, and from people from Asia, as opposed to people who may go on holiday to an Asian country but who did not have such regular contact. The white paper says little about how to engender informal contact in people-to-people links. You cannot criticise people for not knowing much about a country if the people dealing with the country do not disseminate information widely. We need to see behind-the-scenes at a food stall; we need more magazines like Habitus, which features designers from Thailand the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, for instance, alongside ones from Australia and New Zealand as equals. We need to know more about ordinary people doing ordinary things, to become familiar with Asian society, with people from Asia, with all their good points and their foibles rather than just their GDPs and economic potential.

Beyond the White Paper,is the frank and open dialogue of Synodal Chinese bishops with Pope and Curia, and the Vatican press statement that followed,with the explicit reference to the sufferance of many bishops, priests and faithful who have maintained a clear and limpid loyalty to the Catholic faith and the Holy See. It was also recognised publicly and explicitly for the first time by the Holy See, that the great majority of bishops from the official Church are in communion with the Holy Father. they are a declaration of the failure of the Chinese regimes religious policies, which has been trying for decades to create a national Church independent of Rome”. “The reference to the divine constitution of the Church is also very important: it is governed by bishops, the apostles successors, in communion with Peter, their head. The church in China instead is still submitted to the control of an Association wanted by the political party and manipulated by a certain Liu Bainian, who persists in carrying out an incredible quantity of injustices against Catholics. He, in fact, holds primary responsibility for the illegitimate consecrations in 2000 and 2006, which created profound divisions and conflicts between the Catholic communities”.

Due to a misreading,the reference in my last post should have been to a Chinese episcopate meeting with the Holy Father in 2007. The following is the link to a recent 2012 Synodal Letter of solidarity with chinese bishops[both of these posted 'china references' are deserving of close study]. http://www.zenit.org/rssenglish-35803 My apologies!!