Australia And Asia
...significance to Australia. Many global factors have influenced this relationship, including the advent of the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the collapse of the Soviet bloc European nations. In addition, internal political changes in Australia and China have both affected and been affected by the global changes. It will be analysed that Australia's bilateral relationship with China has always had a sharp political edge but that approaching the new millennium
economics and trade considerations are shaping Australias and for that matter Chinese politics.
A central feature of the Government's approach to foreign and trade policy is the importance it attaches to strengthening bilateral relationships. Bilateral relationships are not an alternative to regional and multilateral efforts. Indeed, bilateral, regional and multilateral efforts are mutually supportive. When Australia works closely with another country on a global initiative, such as the conclusion of the Chemical Weapons Convention, it strengthens the bilateral relationship with that country. Similarly, cooperation within APEC helps to consolidate Australia's relations with individual APEC economies. In this way, multilateral and regional efforts feed back into, and broaden, bilateral relationships (Aggarwal 1998).
In the Cold War years of the late 1940's and lasting well into the proceeding four decades (Vadney 1998) Australian government policy towards China after the Chinese communist birth in 1949, was virtually achieved by an overriding commitment to anti-communism. Australias participation in the Korean War and later the Vietnam War meant that in a very real sense China (which gave direct tangible support to both the North Koreans and the North Vietnamese) was Australias enemy (Vadney 1998). Not surprisingly during this period there was a substantial body of public...
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