While we drift, China creeps. It moves patiently, step by step, towards its end game. We’ve seen it in its territorial gains in the South China Sea. While the world bitched and lamented, control of the islands was seized, then military and rocket-launching capacity was established, even raising doubts about fly-over and navigation rights. Loading Similarly, while we dawdled, neglecting what successive governments have designated as “our first line of foreign policy responsibility”, the Chinese have poured in cheap loans and peddled influence across the Pacific. I am concerned that our governments, federal and state, have yet to recognise or concede just how far behind we have fallen in this process. As a minor, anecdotal, example, I was recently informed by a friend who maintains a residence in Vanuatu that the Chinese have built over 100 large warehouses there, all still sitting empty. To what purpose? China was a late entrant to a mature world trade and investment system, and has a vested interest in not being too disruptive, although many question the full impact of its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. Although the reality is that China will soon be the world’s largest economy, this has been a peaceful rise, certainly not a threat, and a very real opportunity for us. Of course, many argue we will ultimately be forced to make a necessarily awkward choice between emerging China and our alliance with the US. But surely we don’t need to choose. We can think and act in our national interest, while capitalising on, and enriching, the relationships with both.

We should avoid getting lost in the sense of threats, and think more in terms of opportunities. China is clearly our major economic partner. The US has been assumed to provide a security guarantee. It is yet to be proven and it has cost us already, dragging us into conflicts such as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, none obviously in our national interest. Chinese President Xi Jinping makes his speech at the Belt and Road Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in April. Credit:AP My personal experience in China now spans almost 30 years, across politics, in business (ranging from innumerable negotiations and successes to having a world-class plant stolen with zero compensation by a state-owned enterprise), academic relationships, attending many conferences, the Beijing Olympics, and so on. In my view, China will respect us if we clearly know, define and act in accordance with our national interest. This may involve us clearly defining, and sticking with, certain “no go” areas. For example, we may wish to preserve our sovereignty over key infrastructure, certain nationally significant assets, migration and student numbers, and that we will speak out against, and vigorously oppose, what we consider to be unacceptable domestic, regional and international Chinese practices and initiatives, such as human rights breaches, organ tourism and animal cruelty. In 1990, having strongly supported Bob Hawke’s decision, post-Tiananmen Square, to offer visas to Chinese students then in Australia, I was concerned about his additional intention to pull back on, even terminate, our diplomatic relations with China. I thought it important to maintain a dialogue, while registering our strongest objections to what had been indefensible breaches of human rights.

I therefore led a delegation of opposition leaders and shadow ministers to Beijing, not as a media event but to clearly make the point that, as China then wished to join the World Trade Organisation and to build significance influence in global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, it would be expected to move to adopt Western standards of human rights and governance. Loading As one of the first Western political leaders to visit Beijing post-Tiananmen, I was afforded meetings with Communist Party chief and soon-to-be president Jiang Zemin, premier Li Peng and other senior ministers. I was even invited to attend as their special guest the first major regional or international sporting event that China had hosted, the Asian Games, but I graciously declined to avoid being the focus of propaganda. The warmth of the initial introductions faded as the meetings proceeded, to the point where, at the last formal banquet, a 13-course meal was served in about 12 minutes. Clearly, we had made our point, but in a most respectful way. In a sense, we need to get more definitive, even smarter, in response to China. For example, in response to Chinese "debt-trap diplomacy” – focused on infrastructure projects in our near-Asian and Pacific neighbours – perhaps we should promote some mechanism or institution to help these neighbours with their foreign debt, even by way of limited guarantees. Perhaps we could do this with the support of the likes of the Asian Development Bank and World Bank, on the condition that they don’t borrow more from the Chinese.