Cold War Transcended: Australia's China Policy, 1949-1990

Abstract

This thesis examines Australia’s responses towards the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to the aftermaths of the Tiananmen Incident of 1989. It is primarily a political history, focusing on the security, diplomatic, economic, and domestic political aspects from the Australian perspective. Through in-depth archival research supplemented by a range of other materials, it aims to both reconstruct how Australian foreign and defence policy pertaining to China had been formulated and conducted, and expose some of the dominant themes in Australian understanding and anticipation of the country. The study follows a chronological order, but highlights only episodes where the various strands in the relations converged or collided. It argues that successive Australian governments had often exercised independent judgements and influences when dealing with China, but had also had to contend with assumptions deeply embedded in Australian strategic culture. While, by the end of this period, antagonism and suspicion gave way to a conscious, bilateral project to develop economic interdependence, a key Australian assumption went unchallenged - that it did not have to conduct this bilateral relationship without the United States' strategic predominance in Asia.