Australia and China at Forty: Stretch of the Imagination

Организация: Australian Centre on China in the World

Издательство: ANU

ISBN: 978-0-9873655-1-4

I was delighted when Stephen FitzGerald agreed to my invitation to present a keynote address for the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW). This oration marks the fortieth anniversary of a new stage in the Australia-China relationship inaugurated by the normalisation of diplomatic relations between the Commonwealth of Australia and the People’s Republic of China in December 1972.

Dr FitzGerald was appointed as Australia’s first ambassador to the People’s Republic by the newly elected Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, head of a Labor government that, upon its electoral victory in December 1972, quickly moved to recognise that country. On 13 November, in the lead up to the 1972 election, Whitlam made one of the most famous political speeches in Australian history, It’s Time. In it he declared that one of the aims of the new government would be ‘to liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people’. I think of uplifting horizons four decades on as I read Steve’s ‘Stretch of the Imagination’.

Due to ill health, Steve was unable to present the lecture on 1 November 2012 as planned. He has, however, kindly agreed to let us publish and distribute what is a profoundly thoughtful, visionary and challenging commemorative lecture on the past of Australia and China, the present of the relationship and its imagined (and hoped for) future.

As ambassador to the People’s Republic during the years 1973-1976, Steve ran an embassy in Beijing at a time of unquiet, tension and eventually dramatic upheaval (and not only in China). He did so with the assistance of a group of talented and committed Foreign Affairs colleagues. Together they engaged with the China of the late-Cultural Revolution era with insight, energy and dedication. It was also an embassy that engaged with the small and motley groups of Australian students studying in China from 1973. It was an honour for me to be among them. It was, many years later, an honour to be invited by Steve to speak at a commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the Australia-China relationship organised by his Asia-Australia Institute of the University of New South Wales at the State Library in Sydney, in November 2002.* Now, ten years later, it is an honour and pleasure for me to recommend Stephen FitzGerald’s lecture to you.

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