| HN Mirror

"Easy: ideological delusions."

First, I'm in Australia which is nearly in China's backyard so here perceptions about China (and similarly with Japan before WWII) were quite different to that of US citizens. People here have always been acutely aware that the country with the world's largest population was just north of them. It has always tempered our thinking.

When I was a teenager in the 1960s China's population was approximately 64 times that of Australia, that ratio has now shortened somewhat to 53 times. With such an enormous population disparity Australians have always been aware that they couldn't avoid dealing with China even though they would have preferred the old order and kept on trading with the UK, US and to a lesser extent Europe.

In the 1960s essentially the only things Australia imported from China were fireworks and a few supplies for Chinese restaurants, now China is our biggest trading partner and our economy would be completely ruined if China exercised its muscles and stopped trading with us. Recently, we saw the potential for damage to our economy when after a diplomatic spat China put tariffs on just some of our exports, it caused considerable economic hardship here. Right, that was just tariffs! If China ever imposed a total trade ban then it would bring this country to its knees. Strategically, this is a very unsatisfactory situation to be in especially given the current tensions. In effect, our trading situation with China is now the antithesis of what it was in the 1960s.

"I'm guessing if you said it was "obvious ... we'd be in the current situation sooner or later," you be viewed as a crank or at least be excluded from the groups actually making decisions."

Well, crank or not the fact is that back in the 1960s it was very obvious to many here that China would be a world power by about 2000 and that its newly-found economic position would change the world. This was viewed as a potentially serious problem we'd have to adjust to given that the Chinese Government was communist and that it ran a command economy. Remember, this was at the height of the Cold War of which China was very much part.

I remember my father lecturing me on multiple occasions about this country's inevitable involvement with China whilst I was still at high school and he was far from being alone. In fact, I took more than a casual interest in the subject and took geography honors at school, my specially was geography of Shanghai and the effect of the Yangtze River Delta on its population. Later, I studied political philosophy at uni which gave me further insights.

Incidentally, my geography teacher had been working in Shanghai before the War and had become a prisoner of the Japanese after its invasion of China so I couldn't have had a better teacher. He was one of the best teachers I've ever had.

I would add that my father's comments about China weren't negative as he was pro China and closely followed its industrialization. As with many of us here, he believed it was inevitable that we would be closely linked to China and what really mattered was how we went about it. This was an important consideration in the 1960s and early '70s during the Cold War as political tensions ran high before Kissinger's '71 visit to China followed shortly thereafter by Nixon.

What wasn't anticipated in the 1960s was Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms and the Chinese Communist Party approval thereof in 1978. Unfortunately Australia did not handle its engagement and economic relationship with China well after it opened up. There were many reasons for this including opportunistic investment/engagement in China without due consideration of Australia's strategic interests. We closed down huge swathes of our industries and either bought product from China or had goods made there. This was further complicated by the free trade movements during the Reagan Thatcher era (here, I've only just touched the surface).

In hindsight it's also now clear that the US could have handled its engagement with China much better than it did.

That said, I'd reiterate that by the mid 1960s there was no doubt that we had anticipated many of the problems and issues that we were likely to encounter engaging with China, many of which have actually come to pass. What wasn't clear was the minutiae, nor did we expect China's rapid move to a socialist style market economy.