Dismal Diplomacy, Disposable Sovereignty: Our Problem with China & America

As ‘America’s shoeshine boy in the South Pacific’, Australia is accustomed to being told what to do. In the space of a mere five years, the subjugation of Australia’s national interest to that of the United States in provoking China under president Trump led us very quickly into a hostile relationship with the rising power of the People’s Republic of China, and trashed forty years of positive relationship building. The Australian Government is inexperienced in its dealings with China, about which it knows very little. It fails to understand that primarily China wants to be treated with the respect due to a major power. Seeking to curry favour with Washington, the Australian Government and the media have turned the people against China. Claiming to stand up against the newly aggressive nation under President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Morrison has damaged Australia’s critical trading relationship with China as he acts to shore up his own political support against domestic challengers. As a result, Australia is now suffering serious Chinese blowback.

This book describes the current unhappy situation and, based on Gantner’s forty years of work in cultural exchange with China, offers some modest suggestions on improving bilateral relations. With the United States pushing for containment of and confrontation with China, and an insecure Australia giving up its sovereignty to buy American protection, it is not at all certain that this will happen.

Carrillo Gantner AC trained as an actor and worked professionally in the US before returning to Australia in 1969. He was a founding director of Playbox Theatre Company (now Malthouse Theatre) and its artistic director in 1976–84 and 1988–93. During his terms he produced over 200 Australian plays and acted in many, in his final role with the company playing King Lear in a production that toured several Australian capital cities, the Tokyo Globe Theatre and Nagoya in Japan, and the Seoul Arts Centre in Korea. He was counsellor (cultural) at the Australian Embassy in Beijing in 1985–87.

Carrillo has served as chairman of the Sidney Myer Fund, president of The Myer Foundation, chairman of Asialink at Melbourne University, and president of Arts Centre Melbourne. He was awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019 for services to the performing and visual arts, and to Australia–Asia cultural exchange. He was the first recipient of the Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Cultural Leader of the Year Award in 2001. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Australia–China Institute for Arts & Culture at Western Sydney University and has honorary doctorates from WSU and the University of NSW.