The Pm Finds His Voice

The Age

Saturday April 12, 2008

Michelle Grattan and Brendan Nicholson - Michelle Grattan is political editor. Brendan Nicholson is foreign affairs correspondent.

Kevin Rudd's criticism of China over Tibet may have upset Beijing, but he has still advanced relations between the nations.

KEVIN Rudd landed in Beijing on Wednesday, went straight to Peking University and told the Chinese they needed to lift their game on human rights in Tibet. It was, on anybody's calculation, a bold step for a visiting Australian Prime Minister. We have not seen the likes of it before in the Australia-China relationship, in which Chinese human rights abuses have tended to be pushed to the side.

What's more, Rudd delivered his speech - his first on Chinese soil as PM - in Mandarin, and to a student audience, making his gesture all the more startling. Can anyone imagine John Howard giving a speech titled "A conversation with China's youth on the future"?

In his address, Rudd offered himself, and Australia, as a "zhengyou" of China. "A true friend is one who can be a zhengyou, that is, a partner who sees beyond immediate benefit to the broader and firm basis for continuing, profound and sincere friendship," he said.

"In other words, a true friendship which offers unflinching advice and counsels restraint to engage in principled dialogue about matters of contention. It is the kind of friendship that I know is treasured in China's political tradition."

Even given Rudd's deep knowledge of Chinese history, literature and culture, which he paraded to the students, and his rapport with the country, this seemed an overly optimistic assessment of Chinese attitudes. There is not much evidence that China is interested in hearing such counsel on the explosive issue of Tibet.

The Olympic protests and Tibet have turned Rudd's visit into a major test of the diplomatic skills of the new Prime Minister. (That's not to mention managing the debate at home, where people needed reassuring that there would be no Chinese security men in the guise of athletes running with the torch.)

In the view of many China experts in Australia, he has passed the test with considerable tact and skill.

Stuart Harris, a former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade who is now a professor in the Australian National University's department of international relations, says that once protests erupted over China's role in Tibet, the PM had no choice but to raise the issue forcefully.

"His speech was very clever in the sense of putting it about as nicely as you could put it as a true, long-term friend of China who was willing to talk to them frankly about some of the issues," Harris says.

"They also need, I think, to keep him in a position where he remains a friend of China because of their need for resources and for a whole range of reasons.

"They won't mind him talking about human rights. They might be a bit concerned that he talked about it publicly rather than just talking to them in confidential discussions."

Talking about human rights publicly embarrassed the Chinese leadership, and it responded swiftly. On Wednesday the communist Governor of Tibet, Qiangba Pucong, declared that Australia and other countries should understand that Tibetans had "wonderful" human rights protection.

On Thursday a Chinese Government spokeswoman said that anyone who was objective would accept the Tibetans had "the best human rights standards ever".

But, according to Harris, the fact that Rudd put human rights into discourse about China has made it less unacceptable than it would be from international leaders who were less involved.

Allan Behm, a former senior defence official who now advises on political risk and strategy, says Rudd's speech was entirely appropriate and that he had put a new stamp on Australia's foreign policy.

"That is quite significant because the benefits to Australia, and I hope to China, far outweigh any disbenefits that might accrue from frankness," he says. "I don't believe we've offended the Chinese at all. They know what Australia's position is.

"It's the first time an Australian prime minister has been able to go and put a few ideas on the table in Beijing which are not supine and not nuanced and tailored to meet the wishes of the Chinese never to be criticised.

Behm says the fact that Rudd made such a speech in Mandarin was amazing.

"There's no other head of government in the world that has gone and given a speech in Mandarin in China as far as I'm aware," he says. "I think it will help Rudd be taken very seriously by the Chinese as a person who evidently enjoys China, he admires China, he likes the company of the Chinese, he's very proud of what he's been able to do in assimilating Chinese culture.

"But at the same time he's got a view and he can say things to China as a friend of China that a lot of other people just couldn't say."

The Lowy Institute's East Asia program director, Dr Malcolm Cook, warns that Rudd's personal knowledge and appreciation of China could be a double-edged sword for him.

"I think it means that in Australia and in the larger world people think that he can help set the thinking of the Chinese leadership more than other leaders. I'm not so sure that's going to be true," he says.

"The best way to influence China is not to do it publicly but to do it behind closed doors when there's no face to be lost."

But, Cook says, if Rudd hadn't mentioned Tibet he would have been strongly criticised in Australia. He described the speech as skilfully crafted.

"If you look at his speech, the very short discussion of Tibet wasn't at the beginning and wasn't the headline of the speech," Cook says.

"You make jokes about yourself and then talk about all the positive things about China and Australia and then later bring in some of the issues your host may wish to focus on more closely," he says.

Rudd had several boxes to tick during his four-day visit to China. Firstly, he wanted to establish a personal relationship with the Chinese leadership - Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao (whom he sees today in Sanya, Hainan province). He had met these leaders while he was in Opposition but did not know them. As well, he was anxious to talk to those he could from the next generation. One of these is Li Keqiang, tipped to succeed Wen as premier, whom Rudd met on Thursday.

Secondly, Rudd wanted to persuade the Chinese to play a bigger part on climate change, an issue on which he sees Australia taking a prominent role, as part of his drive for it to practise activist middle-power diplomacy. He was accompanied in Beijing by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.

He has scored some practical progress on this issue. Out of Thursday's talks with Wen there will be closer co-operation on climate change, which will be elevated to ministerial level, an important advance given China's crucial role in the coming international negotiations for a new agreement on climate change.

Thirdly, he aimed to advance trade interests, both bilateral and a push to finalise the Doha deal, which he has spoken of throughout this trip. Trade Minister Simon Crean will sit down with the Chinese soon to work out the extent of the obstacles to a deal.

One overarching theme has also been to encourage the Chinese to become full players in the global international order. Rudd has repeatedly highlighted Chinese talk of a "harmonious world", which is all about China being a full and positive participant in the world order.

The Australian PM was welcomed in the Chinese media, which had extensive previews before he arrived but, unsurprisingly, almost universally failed to report his Tibet criticisms, although they seized on his opposition to an Olympic boycott.

"Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd enthralled his audience at Peking University with an intimate grasp of China affairs and a thorough understanding of global politics," enthused the China Daily under a page one picture of Rudd and the headline "Rudd turns on the charm and students lap it up".

But while the Chinese like Rudd, they didn't cut him any slack over Tibet. Behind the scenes the Chinese briefers were taking a sledgehammer to Rudd's points about human rights.

Nevertheless, Rudd is dealing with the Tibet issue in the only way he can - as if it's not the main game. And indeed it is not. At heart the relationship between Australia and China is one of common economic and national interest.

As Cook notes, it is likely that in Beijing a bigger issue than Tibet is the bid to buy into Rio Tinto to keep down the costs of resources from Australia.

"That's one that is directly linked to China's industrial development which is the key legitimating factor for the Government domestically," Cook says.

Alan Oxley, chair of the APEC Centre at Monash University, and a former diplomat in Beijing, says interests shape relationships and for China, Australia is a major supplier of resources. "They look at us a little bit as the Japanese looked at us in the 1960s and '70s."

Unlike Australia's relations with, for example, Britain or the US, values are not closely shared. We get on with China despite its bad human rights conduct because to do so is to Australia's economic and strategic advantage.

Successive governments have had to cope with the human rights issue. Mostly they have played it down, so as not to jeopardise the wider economic interests. But Bob Hawke was very critical of China after the Tiananmen Square killings, and it clearly did not damage him in China's eyes in the long term.

John Howard kept human rights questions confined as much as possible to a private dialogue between the two countries and steered clear of the question in public when he could.

Such a course has not been open to Rudd. Firstly, his Labor constituency is strong on human rights. Secondly, the Olympic issue grew bigger and bigger as he got towards the China end of his trip.

"I think he got the balance between being true to his own beliefs and his own domestic political considerations and not being rude to your host or putting them in a very difficult situation," Oxley says.

Rudd rehearsed his Tibetan lines in Washington standing beside US President George Bush, who declared he agreed wholeheartedly. The Americans have been stronger on human rights in China than the Australians in the past. Rudd's salvo annoyed the Chinese, who put in diplomatic complaints in Canberra and Beijing. Rudd then repeated the message in London; arriving in China he put it in his first speech, to the students.

There is no reason to think that the shots exchanged over Tibet had any substantive effect on the talks, or will affect the long-term relationship. (As Oxley notes, the fact that the Chinese leaders did not cancel their meetings with Rudd showed that while they might not be happy, they were tolerating his criticism.)

It may, however, be galling for Rudd, the Sinophile, to read headlines back home declaring "China spurns Rudd's call", as appeared on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald this week.

At least, perhaps, it rebalances the relationship with the Japanese. When Rudd began this marathon trip, which ends at the weekend, he was under fire for giving China too much attention and Japan too little.

As he looks back on his trip, Rudd can be well satisfied, even if there have been some rough edges. He has managed the US alliance, built some support for Australia's activist diplomacy, including its bid for a Security Council seat (which France and Britain are backing), and juggled the tricky China diplomacy.

The trip has revealed what will be the foreign policy style of the new PM. He has shown he has unlimited ambition for Australia's place in the world - and is willing to go out and grab every opportunity to put himself and the country at the centre of things.

Michelle Grattan is political editor.

Brendan Nicholson is foreign affairs correspondent.

© 2008 The Age

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