Australia and its region, by Xavier Pons, English professor at the University of Toulouse

Author :	Xavier Pons
Article date : 01-07-2010

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According to the UN Security Council’s classification, Australia is part of the ‘Western Europe and other’ regional group. This somewhat surrealistic view underlines the contradiction between the country’s historical heritage, in which the links between the former British colony and Europe predominate, and its geographic context, which is that of the Asia-Pacific region.

This contradiction made Australia’s insertion in the region problematic – it was long seen as a foreign body, a bastion of Western imperialism, and even the symbol of a now defunct colonial age. PM John Howard’s 1999 claim that Australia was the US’ ‘deputy sheriff’ in its part of the world was hardly calculated to set the record straight. Australia, whose population used to be 98 per cent British, and where people of Western descent still predominate, has found it very painful to give up the notion that it was in essence a white nation, a fragment of Europe almost unaccountably located on the fringes of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Quite recently still, a projected reform of the school curriculum was taken to task for according too much importance to Aboriginal culture and saying no word of ‘Magna Carta’, that pillar of English culture.

This desperate clinging to a British identity had its roots, among the Australian colonists, in the sense of the uncanny (‘Unheimlichkeit’) which the continent instilled in them. In addition to the strangeness of its fauna, flora and landscapes, it was inconveniently located at the antipodes of Europe, not far from the shores of Asia – an environment that was not just strange but dangerous for the handful of Europeans exiled there. In Australian eyes, Asia was above all the embodiment of the yellow peril. In the middle of the nineteenth century, at the time of the gold rushes, the arrival of some tens of thousands of Chine gold diggers resulted in massive rejection. All kinds of arguments were put forward to justify hostility to them – their immorality, their taste for opium, their inclination to gamble, etc. – but it was mostly their racial difference that was objectionable. The colonists constructed and ideological edifice mingling British patriotism and Darwinian notions (compromising the country’s racial purity through an influx of ‘inferior’ blood would weaken the population) which proclaimed that Australia was a continent reserved for the white race, and had to be thoroughly protected from any Asian contamination.

The difficulties encountered by the colonies in their attempts to limit or prohibit Chinese immigration were one the major incentives for them to federate, which happened in 1901 and led to the creation of the new nation, the Commonwealth of Australia. One of the first measures adopted in the Federal Parliament was the ‘Immigration Restriction Act’ which inaugurated the infamous ‘White Australia Policy’ and made it impossible in practice for coloured people to be accepted as migrants. The policy was to remain in force until the early 1970s.

To the fear of a peaceful Chinese invasion through immigration was added that of a Japanese aggression, which did materialise in the 1940s, causing a lasting trauma.

This historical background has to be kept in mind if one is to understand the ongoing reticence of part of the Australian population where Asia is concerned, a reticence which today also takes the form of a rejection of the handful of asylum-seekers arriving from Iraq, Sri Lanka or Afghanistan.

With the passing of time, Australia has gradually drifted away from its former mother-country, Britain, even though constitutional links (the Queen of England is also Queen of Australia) and sentimental ones remain. It would no longer occur to Australians to say ‘home’, as they used to do, when they mean ‘England’. On the strategic and economic planes, Britain has lost the decisive importance it used to have for its former colony. Its joining Europe in 1973 put paid to the privileged trade relations which made it an important market for Australian exports. Australia had to find new customers, and turned to Asia. The country’s prosperity now depends on Asian countries. Its exports are principally bought by Japan, China, Korea and India, while its imports are mostly sourced from China, Japan and Singapore, with the US as the single Western exception.

From a strategic point of view Britain has long lost its superpower status, and as a result its role as Australia’s official protector. Australia had to turn to the US, which alone was able to guarantee its security. After John Curtin’s rather desperate call for help in December 1941 came ten years later the ANZUS Treaty, a mutual assistance pact between the US, Australia and New Zealand. In actual fact it offers few guarantees to America’s partners but Australia attaches a good deal of importance to it, and feels all the safer for it.

One might be forgiven for thinking that, where Australia is concerned, everything is for the best in the best possible world : it conducts profitable trade with Asia and its security is guaranteed by the world’s most powerful nation – who could ask for more? Unfortunately, things aren’t quite that simple, and the traditional contradictions between the historical and cultural tropism which drives the country towards the West and the economic tropism that attracts it to Asia are still present, albeit in new form. More precisely, Australia is aware that in a number of ways its fate hangs on the possible misunderstandings and conflicts in Chinese-American relations.

There are long standing disagreements between the two countries on human rights issues but there are other issues too. Thus, the US blames China for the chronic undervaluation of its currency, the yuan, which facilitates Chinese exports but is detrimental to US economic interests. If America decided to retaliate, Australia would find itself in an awkward position: even without taking part in the strong arm contest, it would need to take sides, and thus to offend one or the other antagonist. A surge in tensions over Taiwan would be even more worrisome. China looks upon Taiwan as part and parcel of the national territory and is intent on bringing it back within the fold, by force if necessary. In the days of the Cold War, Taiwan was seen as a democratic bulwark against the communist tide, and the US had committed itself to protecting its integrity. If for some reason China resorted to force in order to get Taiwan back, the US would be sitting on the horns of a dilemma – having to decide whether to keep its word and clash with a China whose weight on the international stage keeps increasing, and which might land it into hot water; or renege on its commitment, and thereby lose much credibility. In the first case, Australia would have to take sides, which would be horribly painful; while in the latter case it would inevitably wonder whether American guarantees are worth the paper they’re written on.

Australia has problems of its own with both the US and China, even if the former are less obvious than the latter. Kevin Rudd has been dragging his feet over sending more troops to Afghanistan, as President Obama keeps requesting, while US protectionism in agricultural matters irritates Australian producers. In respect of China too, Australia is not always sure how to proceed.

China’s massive purchases of iron ore, coal and natural gas have allowed Australia to avoid recession but the latter does not wish to see Chinese companies acquire too large a share of its mining companies and thus obtain direct access to the country’s mineral resources. Hence the blocking of Chinalco’s bid to acquire 18 per cent of Rio Tinto. The resulting Chinese discontent may have had something to do with the arrests and condemnations, by Chinese authorities, of several Rio Tinto employees on charges of corruption and industrial spying. One of those employees, Stern Hu, an Australian citizen of Chinese origin, was sentenced to ten years’ jail following a trial held partly in camera, the fairness of which was questioned by many Australians.

There are also political disagreements, illustrated by the visit in Australia of such undesirables (in Chinese eyes) as the Dalai Lama or the Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, in spite of Beijing’s dire warnings. Those are minor but not insignificant irritants.

China and Australia both profit from their current relations, and it is in neither’s interest to allow those relations to deteriorate. For this to happen, it would take a truly seismic upheaval in the international environment, such as an armed conflict between Beijing and Taipei, which seems unlikely for the time being.

In comparison with the links between Australia and the US and China, French-Australian relations appear of much smaller moment. Even though there are no fewer than thirty-three bilateral treaties between the two countries – ranging from the mutual relief of distressed seamen (1879) to the double taxation of income (2006) – France does not feature among Australia’s top ten trade partners. At least it can’t be said relations are bad, as was the case in 1985 after the sinking of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, in 1988 after the tragic events of the Ouvea cave or again in 1995 after the resumption of French nuclear testing in the Pacific on President Chirac’s orders. Those three political missteps resulted in violent anti-French responses which fortunately now belong to an almost-forgotten past. Cooperation between the two countries is most amicable, as exemplified by the very significant Australian contribution to the Quai Branly Museum, the exhumation and identification of Australian soldiers who dies at Fromelles during the Great War, or again the extension to France of the working holiday programme (which allows young people to finance their holiday in Australia by doing odd jobs there). One regret, however, is that Canberra does not give stronger support to Australian studies as they are taught at French universities, as Ottawa does in respect of Canadian studies, thus ensuring their popularity.

If France plays a positive role in Australian imaginations, on account of its art of living, its gastronomy and its cultural heritage, it is all the same a minor partner, and Australians are aware that their future will be played out on a different stage, that of the Asia-Pacific region.

Xavier Pons
English teacher
EA 801 'Cultures Anglo-Saxonnes' (CAS - Anglo-saxon cultures)
University of Toulouse