My Take | As China-Australia ties fray, should Canberra keep its friends close, its enemies closer?
- If China is indeed a power to be worried about, wouldn’t Australia want to know as much about it as possible, perhaps even know what it is up to?
- Blocking or reducing interaction with China or other countries only reduces Australia to a petty, hollow state that is susceptible to misunderstandings
The problem was so chronic that earlier this month, 60 academics penned a letter to Australia’s main funding research agency, the Australian Research Council, saying the production of core China research in Australia is in crisis.
They cite the Australian Academy of Humanities, whose report last year flagged little support for China-related research at scale.
The academy is concerned because having sovereign China knowledge capability is “critical to ensuring that challenges and opportunities are understood with Australia’s distinctive interests in view”.
There is little doubt the drop in Australian funding for research on China and research between Australian and Chinese academics has everything to do with the gnarly “red scare” that lingers in the western end of Asia-Pacific.
