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In the global interconnected economy, China-made information-collecting technologies such as closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras have become popular products for routine video-based surveillance. Hikvision and Dahua are the two largest global suppliers of CCTV cameras, with both companies supplying their products to over 200 countries. Despite their popularity, national security concerns are commonly cited when adopting these cameras, citing manufacturer links with the Communist Party of China (CPC), cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and sales recorded in the Xinjiang region, that has records of human rights violations. This paper is structured in three parts: first, we explore the predominance of China-made information-gathering technologies in Australia; second, we summarise common national security concerns usually associated with China-based technology manufacturers; and third, we propose regulatory measures to regulating China-made CCTV cameras in Australia. The paper suggests that while state and Federal decision-makers are free to remove Chinese CCTV surveillance cameras, they should avoid overt politisation. Overall, a stronger focus should be placed on evaluating cybersecurity risks of Internet of Things (IoT) information-collecting technologies and considering their timely and effective regulation from the perspective of individual and national interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent 'trade war' between Australia and China has understandably sparked fear amongst Australian policymakers, voters and businesses. China's alleged economic coercion towards Australia has the strange property that Chinese leaders are not making any clear explicit demands of Australia. Moreover, this behaviour follows a pattern in recent Chinese dealings with other Asia-Pacific states. Why would a state initiate economic coercion without making clear demands? In this paper, I offer an explanation, building on the logic of audience costs in wars of attrition. I suggest that China's strategy of economic coercion without explicit demands serves a key strategic purpose. Omitting specific demands makes the outcome of any given dispute less clear and hence makes it easier for either side to claim victory. This negates a key advantage which democratic states have in bargaining with autocratic adversaries—the fact that their audience costs for backing down are usually higher, which makes them less likely to initiate but more likely to win international disputes. Implicit economic coercion should therefore be a strategy which is primarily targeted at China's democratic trading partners. I examine the record of Chinese uses of economic coercion in the past and find that this pattern finds much support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Debate within Australia regarding the bilateral relationship with China is complex, contentious and often lacks clarity. Informed by basic international relations theory, we identify two dividing lines within this debate. First, whether understanding China's behaviour is most effectively done through a unitary actor framework, or whether it is essential to look inside the 'black box' of the Chinese party-state. Second, whether one is more concerned about the 'Thucydides trap' or 'Munich'—that is, are the consequences of an overreaction or an underreaction more concerning when interpreting China's intentions and responding to perceived threats. These dividing lines generate four ideal-type policy viewpoints that we label Balancers, Hedgers, Engagers and Reformers, and apply in the Australian context. We then overlay our framework onto the public debate in Australia, selecting a specific bounded case study: commentary and analysis concerning China's behaviour throughout the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, in particular responding to Australia's call for an international inquiry. Our objective is to progress an often circular debate by offering an accessible frame that clarifies and synthesises fundamental disagreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic importance and strategic significance of Australia's relationship with China means that bilateral ties have become a major focus of attention in the scholarly and policymaking communities in Australia. Understandably enough perhaps, less attention has been given to the way the relationship is understood in China. This article addresses this absence in the literature by providing an overview of some of the more important contributions to the discussion in China. The most important point that emerges from such an analysis is that there is an ‘asymmetry of interest’ in the two countries, with Australia occupying a far less prominent place in Chinese policy discussions than China does in Australia. Equally noteworthy is the fact that the study of Sino-Australian relations in China is characterised by a greater variety of perspectives than it is in Australia. Appreciating this diversity is an essential part of developing a more accurate understanding of the policymaking milieu in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers the regional order-building challenges that Australia presently confronts in the Indian Ocean region (IOR). The author argues that while regional stability within the IOR constitutes an increasingly important Australian security interest, policy makers will struggle to translate the order-building strategies they have previously pursued in East Asia into an Indian Ocean context. In East Asia, Australia has historically pursued a ‘dual track’ order-building strategy centred on its participation in a US-dominated ‘hub and spokes’ alliance system alongside multilateral regional engagement. The absence of an equivalent alliance system or an established tradition of multilateral security diplomacy conversely precludes an extension of this strategy into the IOR. Growing tensions between the USA and China and between China and India, meanwhile, further complicate IOR security dynamics, while underscoring the urgent need for a more coherent approach to regional order-building. With these challenges in mind, the author concludes by proposing a range of bilateral, minilateral and multilateral initiatives that Australia should pursue to stimulate the emergence of a more cooperative IOR security environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With fast-growing economies, defence capabilities and international interests, China and India are becoming increasingly active as contributors of public goods in international security, such as anti-piracy operations, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, capacity-building, stabilisation and peacekeeping. This article examines the drivers and characteristics of China's and India's growing roles in contributing to security public goods. It also considers the extent to which modernisation of these rising Asian powers' conventional military capabilities is suited for these roles; the conditions under which China and India might expand such activities; and some of the possible consequences of enhanced Chinese and Indian roles in protecting the commons using military means. Those effects include potential impacts on the management of transnational security problems, the extension of Chinese or Indian geopolitical influence, the worsening of Sino-Indian strategic competition, and the ways other powers might respond, particularly in situations where China or India act unilaterally. Policy implications for existing public goods providers, such as Australia, are briefly considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The re-emergence of China in the new millennium has increased global demand for mineral resources, causing a return to the Australian vision of national prosperity tied to primary exports—this time minerals. Many analysts have questioned the wisdom of anchoring Australia's prosperity to being a quarry for Asia. The current mining boom has enabled Australia to postpone, but has not removed, the need to develop new industries to sustain a high standard of living in a future marked by global warming. Innovation is essential to the development of new industries that can contribute to a strong and sustainable economy, but cultivating innovation requires serious national commitment over the long term. This requires Australia to seriously reconsider education policy at all levels and to abandon what the author terms ‘rational choice populism’—a culture of anti-intellectualism and an unequivocal belief in a form of market fundamentalism—that discourages the advanced level of investment in human capital required for innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The relations between China and Australia are akin to close interdependence; however, they are not symmetrical and are sometimes even contradictory. Although China is the number-one trade partner of Australia, it is the most uncertain factor in security concerns for Australia. The Sino-Australian relationship is essentially a process of constant inter-adjustment by China, as an Oriental great power with a socialistic political system, and Australia, which is a leading middle power in the Asia-Pacific region and tends to keep its policies at a status quo. The phenomenon of both cooperation and competition in Sino-Australian relations reflects a universal law in the international political power transfer process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2005, a burgeoning wave of Chinese investments has set off a new 'minerals boom' in the Australian iron ore and coal mining sectors. While normally a welcome development, the state-owned and strategic nature of the investors has raised concerns in Australia about how these should be regulated. As a result, in February 2008 the Australian government declared an intention to more closely screen foreign direct investment (FDI) from state-owned sources, which both supporters and detractors alike have claimed is evidence of 'resource nationalism' in Australia's approach towards its trade and investment relationships with China. This article challenges this understanding through an examination of the characteristics of Chinese mining FDI, the dilemmas these present to the Australian government, and the relatively restrained nature of its response. Through this, Australia's FDI policy is explained as a defensive move against the potential for strategic behaviour by Chinese investors resulting from their state ownership, rather than any national program to subject minerals trade and investment to political control. On this basis, the article argues that Australian government policy instead evidences a 'resource liberalism' approach, which intends to ensure that the governance of Australia's minerals trade and investment with China remain market-based processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian foreign and strategic policy has not yet begun to address the implications for Australia's international situation of China's growing power. China today already challenges the American leadership that has kept Asia peaceful and Australia secure for many decades. There are real and growing risks that Washington and Beijing will not find a way to work together peacefully as relative power shifts from one to the other. Unless they do, Asia's future is bleak, and so is Australia's. Australia therefore needs to work to promote a new order in Asia which accommodates China's power without conceding more than is necessary to keep the peace. This will mean encouraging America to forgo primacy in Asia in favour of working with China and others in a shared regional leadership. Australia also needs to start preparing for the possibility that Asia will nonetheless become a more contested and dangerous place over coming decades, and consider what its options would be. None of them appear attractive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Japan-Australia security cooperation in the context of changing regional dynamics in the Asia-Pacific. The combined influences of the rise of China, the US position in the world after two years under an Obama administration, and the changing structure of regional cooperation are setting new challenges and a historically distinct context for security relations between Japan and Australia. After examining each of the above regional changes, this article discusses the effects of political transitions over the last several months in both Japan and Australia. It then highlights three natural areas for Japan and Australia to pursue increased cooperation: denuclearisation, addressing China's policy on territorial integrity, and the rise of China's military, in particular in terms of naval power. The article concludes by providing the author's perspective on Japan-Australia security cooperation and suggests the future direction of relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses factors that cause China to have different approaches to different regional multilateral security institutions. Current research not only has little to say about China's motivation to participate, but also little regarding the level of its participation in or support for regional security institutions. To explain why China's post-cold war participation in regional multilateral security institutions varies, this article argues that threat levels help explain China's conditions for participating in multilateral security institutions, and security interests help explain China's behaviour as a member of such institutions. The author stresses that these are useful variables that can explain China's behaviour with respect to regional multilateral security institutions. In the foreseeable future, China's general posture toward regional multilateral security cooperation will be passive participation and strong support. Australia should not only consider strategies which emphasise strengthened bilateral relationships between Canberra and Beijing, but also continue to positively support regional multilateral security institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to explain why the Free Trade Agreement negotiation between Australia and China has been extremely difficult, despite political goodwill from Beijing and Canberra. It first argues that the reason for the slow progress of the negotiation is not caused by lack of motivation from the Chinese government. It then lists the differences in negotiation between China and Australia, focusing on their respective selective vs. comprehensive, border vs. behind-the-border, flexible vs. rigid and state vs. market approaches. It then looks into domestic politics in China to explain why China has taken such a stance, underlining domestic resistance from sectors like agriculture and services in a dynamic domestic political environment on the one hand, and the structure of the policymaking institution that constrains the power of trade negotiators on the other. It concludes by pointing out where the potential for a breakthrough in the FTA negotiation lies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to its relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC), Australia's relations with Taiwan are often underrated. As a substantial trading partner and as a polity that has transformed into a robust 'Asian democracy', Taiwan constitutes a significant if highly complex dimension of evolving Australian foreign policy. A workshop was convened at the Australian National University in early May 2007 to consider the evolving geopolitical, economic and socio-cultural dimensions of bilateral relations between these two regional actors. Among the basic themes emerging from workshop deliberations were how the growth of Chinese power would effect stability in the Taiwan Straits and throughout maritime Asia; how Chinese power would shape future order-building in the region and any role that Australia and/or Taiwan might play in that process; how Taiwanese democracy would factor into any future regional order and what Australia's future Taiwan posture should be given that that country is committed to a 'one China policy' acknowledging the PRC as China. Among the conclusions reached were that Australia must intensify its diplomatic efforts toward both Beijing and Washington to ensure that potential Sino-American differences over Taiwan do not escalate into military conflict and that time and generational change may work to facilitate a peaceful solution to this protracted security dilemma*. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vanuatu became a major issue in Australia-China-Taiwan relations during Serge Vohor's turbulent prime ministership in 2004. Already engaged in a struggle with Australia over 'good governance', Vohor signed an agreement diplomatically recognising Taiwan. Chinese and Australian pressure led to Vohor's ouster, and a diplomatic setback for Taiwan. Although Australia and Taiwan viewed each other as side issues in this episode, with Australia focused on Vohor and Taiwan on China, their interests were directly opposed during the episode. As became evident in the aftermath of the post-election riot in Solomon Islands in April 2006, these divergent positions have had a lasting negative impact on each country's perception of the other. The key events of 2004 are examined here to demonstrate how this episode has affected the wider landscape of Australia-China-Taiwan relations.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2005 was notable for the Howard government's embrace of China. Spectacular resource deals were accompanied by the government's optimistic public declarations that China's rise could be accommodated in the current Asia–Pacific power structure. Alliance relations, which were the cornerstone of the Howard government's foreign policy, were boosted further by the decision to strengthen the Australian Defence Force's capacity to contribute to future US operations. The central challenge for this government arising from its decision-making in 2005 was to manage both major power relations in tandem. This was a year where the connection between international policy and domestic issues stood in stark relief. Terrorism concerns provided the context for the government's foreign policy but it also drove stringent domestic legislation. Australia's relationship with Indonesia improved but the commitment to Iraq remained problematic. Not the least of these difficulties stemmed from the exposure of the Australian Wheat Board's corporate dealings in Iraq which had operated counter to the government's international policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the need for countries to co-exist inspite of different ideologies and social systems in light of the Sino-Australian relationship. Effect of the cold-war mindset on intellectuals and public opinion in Australia; Identification of the need to build an accommodating world community; Assessment of the trilateral Australia-China-U.S. relationship; Prospects for Sino-Australian relationship.

Assesses the status of foreign relations between Australia and China at the end of the twentieth century. Discussion on the foreign relations of the countries in 1998 and 1999; Economic relations of the countries; Foreign policy issues faced by the two countries.

Investigates Australia's political relations with China. Australia's achievements in the 1980s; Objectives of Australia's policy toward China; Australia's reaction to the Tiananmen Square incident; Australia's attitudes toward human rights issues in China; Effects of Australia's relationship with Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Presents a foreword to the articles published in the November 2002 issue of 'Australian Journal of International Affairs,' vol. 56. Contributions of Chinese ambassador to Australia, Shi Chunlai, Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam and American China analyst, Robert Sutter, to the study of Sino-Australian relationship; Commentary on the work of Hedley Bull; Study on Islam and Society in South-Eastern Asia.