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Whitlam in China

Gough Whitlam’s visit to China in 1971 was a turning point in relations between the two countries. But luck also played a part in this audacious mission

Billy Griffiths 22 October 2014 3190 words

gough whitlam china visit

“A stroke of genius”: Gough Whitlam speaking to journalists after his return from China in mid 1971. National Library of Australia

Emerging as opposition leader in February 1967, with Labor still reeling from a crushing electoral defeat, Gough Whitlam fronted the press and defined the type of leader he wanted to be: “I want you to know what I’m for, not what I’m against. What I’ll do, not what I’ll undo or what I’ll resist.” On that day he sketched the first outlines of what would become known as “The Program,” and he appointed himself opposition spokesman for foreign affairs, a forceful statement of his internationalist vision.

As opposition leader, Whitlam sought to present the Australian people with a powerful vision of a viable alternative government. He goaded his party into action, deriding the oppositionist mentality that equated defeat with ideological purity and daring his colleagues to unite behind him; daring them to govern. “Certainly,” he declared in a charged speech to the Victorian executive of the Labor Party, “the impotent are pure.”

By 1971, Whitlam led a re-energised and reformed party and was riding a wave of popular support. The 1969 election had seen an enormous 6.5 per cent swing against the Coalition government, an emphatic sign of the public’s desire for political change. It was in this climate that he took the greatest risk of his political career: he sought to travel to China.

I am still struck by the audacity of this decision. Here was an Australian opposition leader seeking to travel to China before any other Western leader; aiming to make high-level political contact with the most populous communist power in the world in the midst of the Cold War. In many ways it seemed like political suicide. Whitlam had a lot to lose and little to gain from such a visit. And yet he did it anyway.

The 1971 visit to China was not an exercise in political opportunism; it was a bold expression of Whitlam’s foreign policy vision, which prioritised regionalism and internationalism over ties with “great and powerful friends.” As early as 1954, Whitlam endorsed recognition of the People’s Republic of China; he was the first member of parliament to do so. His campaign had been long and consistent and it was driven by his passion for reason and his contempt for ideological distortions in international affairs. It simply did not make sense in his ordered, legalistic mind that Australia would ignore the political existence of a quarter of the world’s population. Whitlam hoped his 1971 visit would mark the end of Australian thinking about China in terms of red and yellow perils.

Ultimately, it was a coincidence that lent much of the drama to this episode. A matter of days after Whitlam shook hands with Zhou Enlai in the Great Hall of the People, the US president’s envoy, Henry Kissinger, secretly engaged in the same diplomatic ritual. Whitlam had the good fortune to find himself at the epicentre of a seismic shift in America–China relations. The coincidence, in the words of Bill Hayden, recast “a disaster in the making” into “a stroke of genius.”

But the Kissinger visit, however beneficial it was for Whitlam politically, also tends to overshadow the substance of his visit. What was a bold piece of foreign policy in its own right – an irresistible vignette of Whitlam’s time as leader – has become remembered primarily as a case of fortuitous timing.

The Australian delegation to China flew into Peking near midnight on 3 July 1971 through “a prolonged and spectacular thunderstorm.” It was the week before Whitlam’s fifty-fifth birthday. The motley crew of Australian politicians, journalists and academics bewildered their Chinese hosts. Their tendency to communicate in rhyming slang compounded the confusion already caused by the Australian accent, “a thing of terror” to Chinese ears familiar with English spoken by Americans.

Whitlam, with his “boundless energy” and insatiable intellectual curiosity, gave the expedition a sense of occasion. “His mind is like a beam whose ray must cast itself somewhere,” Ross Terrill wrote in 1971. “Between talks with Chinese leaders, he plunged into social or historical investigation, now with a question and now with an answer to someone else’s question, but at all times engaged with China as if no other country existed on earth.” He devoured the books on Chinese culture that his China adviser Stephen FitzGerald supplied him with and approached all aspects of his travelling experience with great enthusiasm, whether he was explaining the details of Chinese dynasties to the accompanying journalists or downing the explosive rice wine, mao-t’ai .

The journalists shared his sense of adventure and their presence proved crucial to the success of the visit (although, as Terrill observed, “it puzzled [the Chinese] that Australian papers sent political correspondents, not foreign policy or Asian specialists”). Importantly, the stories that filtered back to Australia gave the public rare insights into a forbidden and unknown land. Very few Australians had travelled to China. And although the delegation had a political edge, its members were aware of the rare opportunity afforded to them and were intent on learning as much as possible about the land and its culture.

Their Chinese hosts were attentive to the wants and needs of the Australians and catered to these where possible. The Australian enthusiasm for the local beer, for example, did not escape the eyes of the Chinese, who soon began to serve it at every occasion, including breakfast. As FitzGerald later wrote, “the Chinese went out of their way to provide everything that was essential to the success of the visit, in the ALP’s terms as much as their own.” This was never more evident than on the evening of Monday 5 July.

After a morning of talks with Bai Xiangguo, and just before lunch, the Australians were asked by the spokesman for the People’s Institute to “please remain in the hotel”: there would be an “interesting film” that evening. He did not explain why, but they would need to be formally dressed for the occasion. The hours passed and no further information came until late in the afternoon, when the official returned. The film was off. “Sometime in the night,” he announced, barely able to suppress his excitement, “you will be taken to see the premier.”

It was a coup for the Australians and they immediately peppered the official with questions. The meeting, he divulged, would be held privately in the Great Hall of the People, and probably not until quite late. Zhou Enlai, at the age of seventy-three, had a formidable reputation, both as a worker and an intellect. A night owl, he worked most days until four or five in the morning. Midnight meetings were common practice.

The summons came earlier than expected. At 9 pm the Australian journalists left the hotel, and the official delegation followed soon after. They were driven to the front steps of the massive stone structure of the Great Hall of the People, which even today emanates a powerful sense of grandeur. It looms tall above the vast, empty expanse of Tiananmen Square and is flanked on one side by the impressive doors of the Forbidden City. Whitlam was led past the Red Army guards and through the high-ceilinged lobbies to the sparsely furnished East Room. There, he found the small, slim figure of Zhou Enlai.

The premier greeted the Australians individually in English. Then, after the customary photographs with the delegation, he surprised the travelling pressmen by inviting them to stay and “bear witness to the fact that the people of China want to be friends with the people of Australia.” His words transformed the supposedly “private” meeting into a public performance, staged in front of Australian and Chinese press and a dozen television cameras. Zhou was issuing a challenge to the Australian opposition leader.

Whitlam’s initial unease was palpable. “The political risks became intense,” Whitlam later wrote, recalling his nerves. The twenty Australian and Chinese journalists joined forty officials who were already in the room, sitting expectantly in a horseshoe of cane chairs. Whitlam took his seat next to Zhou Enlai at the centre of this scene. Beside him sat the official members of the Labor delegation; beside Zhou sat many of the ministers and senior aides the Australians had met since arriving two days earlier.

The 105 minutes spent in that grand room with crimson carpets and opulent chandeliers defined the political outcome of the visit. It is the centrepiece of this drama. And this is precisely because the Chinese chose to make it so. Why, we must wonder, did the Chinese grant such a high-level meeting to a visiting delegation from the Australian opposition?

The timing is one reason. The publicity of the event and the obscurity of his interlocutor gave Zhou Enlai the opportunity to broadcast internationally his views of the contemporary world situation. In the unfolding discussion, Sino-Australian relations took a secondary position on the agenda: Zhou meant for his statements to be heard in Tokyo, Moscow, and, especially, Washington. Then there was the importance China now attached to relations with “small powers,” like Australia. The new outward-looking foreign policy that China had been cultivating in 1970–71 was focused largely on building ties with “small powers,” or the “second world.” It was only through the increased international participation of “small powers,” Zhou reasoned, that the dominating and dangerous bipolar environment that had been created by America and Russia could be defused.

Leaning back in his wicker chair, Zhou sat relaxed and at ease in this public environment. His arms rested limply beside him, becoming animated at intervals for effect: there was little wasted motion, either in his words or his actions. Whitlam, at a comparatively gargantuan six feet four, sat stiffly beside him, leaning forward in the chair, his hands clasped: a giant hunched in concentration. The exchange was polite but blunt. Whitlam’s direct style suited the premier’s own.

Having led most of his discussions with the Chinese so far, Whitlam allowed himself to be guided by Zhou Enlai. After all, he did not want to be presumptuous; his host had a famously penetrating intellect. For forty-four years Zhou Enlai had been a member of the inner circle of the Chinese Communist Party – even longer than Mao. The breadth and depth of his experience and knowledge was unparalleled in China. On the world stage he was feared and respected. “His mind ranged back and forth over issues over time,” Stephen FitzGerald told me in 2011. “He had a context for talking about international issues which was enormous. It was analytical and pretty unusual.”

FitzGerald paused for a moment, and then in a soft voice he continued. “Gough has a similar kind of mind. It was apparent to some extent in that meeting but it became more apparent when Gough became prime minister. If Zhou talked about great power relations going back into the forties, Gough was also with him on that instantly.”

Whitlam’s initial discomfort quickly passed. The conversation was both a high-stakes game and a rich historical discussion. Zhou’s main goal was to draw Whitlam into denouncing Australia’s alliance with America under the ANZUS treaty. Several times he manoeuvred the discussion so that the two men found an area of agreement, then he would passionately assert China’s view and pause to hear Whitlam’s own – daring him to disagree.

On one occasion, the premier drew a comparison between Australia’s relationship with America and China’s pact with Russia (the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Aid). In recent years, China’s dealings with its ally, the Soviet Union, had turned sour through mutual suspicion and doctrinal divergences. Zhou still felt betrayed and he warned Whitlam against trusting unreliable allies, asking, “Is your ally very reliable?” Whitlam was careful to reject the parallel: there had been no similar deterioration in relations between Australia and America. Zhou Enlai threw up his arms. “But they both want to control others.” He beat his wicker chair for emphasis. “Our socialist country will not be controlled by anyone.”

Zhou’s deep sensitivity about China’s dignity as an independent power was shared by many of the Chinese that the Australians had met. To Zhou, expansionism was a dirty word. The events of the last two centuries, since China had been dethroned by the West as the dominant world power, weighed heavily on his mind. China’s recent split with the Soviet Union had only served to intensify the general distrust of Japanese militarism and American imperialism. These three powers – Russia, America and Japan – were the driving concerns of Chinese foreign policy and were regularly touted as the three international evils in the pages of the propaganda newspapers. As one Chinese official advised Whitlam on the trip, “To understand the Chinese you must understand their history.”

“Yours has been a bitter experience,” Whitlam sympathised, “and I understand your feeling.” But he warned Zhou about fearing American imperialism. “I still deplore the destructive style of John Foster Dulles, but his soul does not keep marching today,” he said. “The American people have broken president Lyndon Baines Johnson and if Richard Milhous Nixon does not continue to withdraw his forces from Vietnam they will destroy him similarly. The Australian people have had a bitter experience in going all the way with LBJ. They know America made [Prime Minister Harold Holt] change his policy and they will never again allow the American president to send [Australian] troops to another country.”

Within this comment we can see the signs of how Whitlam would redefine the America–Australia relationship during his prime ministership. We see his belief that Australia had its own national interests and could act independently on that basis. We can also see the confidence with which he felt he could criticise the US government as an equal in the alliance. Moreover, by doing this from China, he emphasised the priority he placed on developing a regionalism that was not dominated by the great powers. In Australia, Whitlam was lambasted for this comment, but Zhou received it well: “Such a very good appraisal of the American people.”

On one final point in the meeting, Whitlam pondered aloud whether, with better policies and a closer Sino–Australian relationship, the destruction and slaughter in Vietnam could have been avoided. He was cut off by Zhou, who, having run China on a day-to-day basis for more than two decades, would not accept such abstract speculation. With a grand gesture, he proclaimed, “What is past is past,” before adding more encouragingly, “and we look forward to when you can take office and put into effect your promises.”

“The Zhou–Whitlam debate,” journalist Bruce Grant wrote at the time, “is one of those unexpected dramatic events that make or break political reputations because they capture the public imagination. It will become a part of Australian political folklore and Mr Whitlam is the beneficiary.” Grant’s words typified the sentiment felt by those Australian journalists who had witnessed the spectacle. There was a general sense that “Mr Whitlam [had] held his ground well in a testing situation with a brilliant political debater and negotiator.” One journalist called it “a virtuoso political performance,” “a masterpiece in diplomacy, public relations, mental agility and sheer tactics.” The only Australian in the room who was perhaps a little disappointed with the meeting was the shadow agriculture minister, Rex Patterson, who was annoyed that Whitlam had not seized the opportunity to ask the premier about wheat.

The public setting had proved ultimately to be a blessing for Whitlam, who thereafter could not be credibly accused of backroom dealings with the Chinese. It had also unexpectedly afforded him the extraordinary opportunity to display his credentials, as an opposition leader, on the world stage. That Whitlam had not only engaged equally with one of the world’s most formidable statesmen, but even challenged Zhou Enlai on some issues, deeply impressed the accompanying journalists. Here was a leader who gave Australia international presence.

The prime minister, William McMahon, openly ridiculed Whitlam’s visit to China. “It is time,” he raged, “to expose the shams and absurdities of [Whitlam’s] excursion into instant coffee diplomacy.” Invoking Robert Menzies’ traditional rationale for the Vietnam war (to “stop the downward thrust of China between the Pacific and Indian Oceans”), he continued, in mock disbelief, “He went on playing his wild diplomatic game, knocking our friends one by one until he was virtually alone in Asia and the Pacific, except for the communists… I find it incredible that at a time when Australian soldiers are still engaged in Vietnam, the leader of the Labor Party is becoming a spokesman for those against whom we are fighting!”

As for Whitlam’s late-night meeting with the Chinese premier, McMahon declared, now famously, “In no time at all Zhou Enlai had Mr Whitlam on a hook and he played him as a fisherman plays a trout.”

Three days after McMahon’s trout speech, Nixon announced the news of Kissinger’s secret visit to China and his own intention to travel to Peking before May 1972. He hoped that his visit would become a “journey for peace,” stressing his “profound conviction that all nations will gain from a reduction of tensions and a better relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.”

The announcement rocked the international community. The news had particular and peculiar impact in Japan and Australia. Whitlam, who had completed his tour of China, heard the broadcast from Tokyo and quickly called on the prime minister of Japan, Eisaku Sato. With tears welling in his eyes, Sato confided to Whitlam his despair and humiliation. Through a technical glitch, he had not been informed about the change in American policy: “The journalists told me about it.”

A similar response was being stirred in Canberra, with an irate McMahon feeling embarrassed and betrayed by the initiative. He had known of the policy shift only a few hours in advance. The lack of consultation made a mockery of Australia and America’s “candid” relations. McMahon sought to deflect his emotional wounds onto Whitlam, announcing weakly to the Australian press: “It makes an awful farce of Whitlam’s visit. Whitlam did not even know that Kissinger was there. That’s how much the Chinese trust him. It makes a mockery of the man.”

But Whitlam felt neither mocked nor snubbed. It was a moment of “extraordinary vindication.” As the Chinese official who broke the news cheekily commented, “Perhaps your prime minister won’t be talking anymore about trout.”

The forty-three years since Whitlam’s first visit to China have been transformative for the Sino-Australian relationship. China has moved rapidly from the periphery of Australia’s foreign policy vision to the centre. But beyond this relationship, Whitlam’s 1971 visit inaugurated a fundamental change in the way Australia relates to Asia.

We all know the incredible whirlwind of change that was the Whitlam government. But Whitlam reflected most on an initiative he enacted from opposition. He described the 1971 visit to China as the most “exciting and exacting of his career.” •

This is an edited extract from The China Breakthrough: Whitlam in the Middle Kingdom, 1971 (Monash University Publishing, 2012).

Billy Griffiths

Billy Griffiths is a Sydney-based writer and historian. His work has appeared in Griffith REVIEW , Quarterly Essay and the Australian Book Review .

Topics: China | foreign policy | history | Labor Party | politics

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Some records include terms and views that are not appropriate today. They reflect the period in which they were created and are not the views of the National Archives.

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Gough Whitlam visiting the Echo Wall on diplomatic trip to China

Gough Whitlam visiting Echo Wall during diplomatic trip to China.

About this record

This is a black-and-white photograph of the Australian Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam during his historic visit to China between 31 October and 4 November 1973. Dressed in a long coat, Whitlam has his ear to part of the circular Echo Wall in the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Further along the wall, others are doing the same. Among a small crowd watching Whitlam is Australia’s first ambassador to China, Stephen Fitzgerald, dressed in a coat and tie. Beside him, with her arms crossed, is a Chinese interpreter.

Educational value

  • Prime Minister Whitlam’s 1973 diplomatic trip was the first visit to China by an Australian Prime Minister and a milestone in Australia–China relations. Whitlam, Prime Minister from 1972 to 1975, established diplomatic relations with mainland China soon after coming to power.
  • After nearly three decades of the Cold War, Whitlam’s visit to China in 1973 began the first period of diplomatic relations between Australia and any communist country. The Cold War was a period of tension between the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, which began after the end of the World War II and finally ended in 1991. By the early 1970s China and the Soviet Union had also been on poor terms for many years, even though both countries had communist governments.
  • The visit depicted here was not Whitlam’s first to China. As Opposition leader, he led a Labor Party delegation to China in 1971—at a time when the McMahon government was still refusing to open any diplomatic ties with the country. The 1971 Whitlam-led visit came several days before the United States announced that President Richard Nixon would visit Beijing. (The Nixon visit took place in February 1972.)
  • Australia did conduct trade with China during the 1950s, but the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1972 paved the way for rapid expansion. By 2008, Australia’s two-way trade with China was worth almost $68 billion. After the United States, China is Australia’s biggest source of imported products, and a major source of students and tourists. China is a major importer of Australian iron ore and other mineral and agricultural goods.
  • The party led by Whitlam to China in 1973 included his wife Margaret and the Minister for Northern Development, Rex Patterson. The itinerary included a state banquet at the Great Hall of the People, hosted by Premier Zhou Enlai; a meeting with chairman Mao Zedong; and talks with King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, who was living in exile in Beijing at the time. Sightseeing included a visit to the Great Wall of China.
  • The Echo Wall seen in the photograph surrounds the Imperial Vault of Heaven in the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Also known as the Whispering Wall, the acoustic properties of this round structure allow a person whispering along the inner wall to be heard around the other side.

Acknowledgments

Learning resource text © Education Services Australia Limited and the National Archives of Australia 2010.

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The Whitlam visit to China 50 years on

On Tuesday 30 November, the Australian Institute of International Affairs NSW held an event to mark the 50 th anniversary of the visit to Beijing by Gough Whitlam, then leader of the opposition in the Australian parliament. The Institute was addressed by Mr Zhao Wenfei, Deputy Consul General at the Chinese Consulate General in Sydney, and Mr Peter Phillips, former diplomat and China political and strategic analyst in the Office of National Assessments.

Peter opened the event by contextualising Australia and China’s contemporary relationship through an examination of Australia’s conception of China as an international threat, stemming from a lack of understanding and trust. He quoted Whitlam:

“One of the great troubles between China and the West is that we expect China to believe the best about our statements of intentions while we choose to believe the worst about hers. We expect understanding for our own fears, but we have never tried to understand hers. We have been obsessed about our own historical experience, but we scoff at China’s obsession with her own experience.”

Whitlam’s 1971 visit established a basis for increasingly complex bilateral relations between China and Australia. It was also part of wider international developments: Peter placed a large focus on the timing, noting that much of the success of the visit was due to this. Whitlam’s correspondence with Zhou Enlai, First Premier of the People’s Republic of China, secured a meeting for the first week of July 1971. As Peter explained, this was opportune: unknown to the Australians, China and the US were moving quietly towards establishing relations. In what is referred to as “ping-pong diplomacy”, China had extended an invitation to the American international ping-pong team, then in Japan, to visit China. This catalysed relations between the US and China: President Nixon requested a meeting between Dr Henry Kissinger, his National Security Advisor, and Zhou Enlai, which took place from 9 to 11 July 1971 – in the week after the Whitlam visit – on Kissinger’s way back from Pakistan. On 15 July Nixon broadcast his announcement that he would visit China as the US President. The Whitlam visit, despite savage criticism from the conservative side of politics in Australia, was consistent with these US moves.

Prime Minister McMahon‘s response to the Whitlam visit was to state that Australia must not become pawns to the “Communist power”. He said “China has been a political asset to the Liberal Party and will continue to be an asset for some time” (i.e. as a basis for criticising the Labor approach). But Whitlam defeated McMahon and became Prime Minister in 1972; he oversaw a return to Asia, recognition of the People’s Republic of China, an end to Australian involvement in the Vietnam war and the opening of Australia’s Embassy in Beijing in 1973. Subsequent Prime Ministers including Malcolm Fraser, John Howard and Paul Keating had sustained and developed relations with China, which had however now declined.

Mr Zhao began his address by noting that friendly exchanges and practical cooperation between the two countries have been expanding ever since 1971. Mr Zhao acknowledged the foresight of Australia and the US: before relations existed, China was a mysterious place to much of the Western world. He argued that Australia and China should follow the historic trend and promote healthy relations. His presentation of Australian-Chinese relations was based on four words: trust, respect, reciprocity, exchange.

  Regarding trust, Mr Zhao explained that China is perceived in much Australian opinion as Australia’s biggest threat, rooted in a fear of Chinese interference in Australia’s domestic affairs as well as its regional role. However, he stated that these accusations are inconsistent with the facts and truth, that China does not have any hidden ambition; they only want to develop and better Chinese life and have never sought to change Australia’s political system or internal affairs. He hoped that in the future, Australia would perceive China’s strategic diplomacy with a rational view.

On respect, Mr Zhao commented that fifty years ago, when Whitlam first visited the country, the differences between the two nations may have been greater than they are today, but that did not stop the visit. He criticised the contemporary “megaphone diplomacy” that is placing wrongful allegations and bias on China.

In discussing reciprocity, he stated that pragmatic operations are the foundation and driving force for all mutually beneficial cooperation. China’s investment in Australia has exceeded 40 billion dollars, and accounts for one third of Australian exports.

Mr Zhao also discussed the benefits of people-to-people exchange. He commented that previously, Australia and China found each other mysterious, but in the contemporary context that has changed; we visit each other often, with Australia receiving more than 1.4 million annual tourists from China (pre-pandemic). Now, Mandarin is the second most widely spoken language in Australia.

In their closing remarks, Peter acknowledged the positive step taken by the Chinese government, and in particular the Embassy and Consulate General in Australia, in engaging with media outlets and making senior spokespersons available. Mr Zhao replied to Peter’s comment by stating that it was the responsibility of the Embassy and Consulate General to promote mutual understanding and friendly exchanges between the nations. He added Australia and China need to improve communication and engagement to present the real and true China to the Australia media and public.

In response to questions Peter said that it would be highly desirable for China to join the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and for Australia to actively support this. Chinese membership of the TPP would be to the overall advantage of world trade. Mr Zhao responded that, over the past 40 years, China’s development has benefited from globalisation and that China always supports any initiative for arrangements that contribute to regional integration and free trade. He added that China had already applied to join the TPP and that “we are ready to talk to various parties, including the Australian side, in this regard”.

Further questions explored the impacts of Xi Jin Ping’s rule on China-Australia relations, the current state and quality of media reporting on China and Australia and the concerns about the strategic objectives of the Soviet Union that underlay Whitlam and Fraser’s desire to strengthen relations with China.

Asked what action is required from Australia and China to re-establish high level diplomatic contact, Mr Zhao said that the responsibility rests with Australia. He argued that the crux of bilateral setbacks and difficulties stem from Australia’s undermining of China’s core interests. China and Australia should not hold a dialogue just for the sake of dialogue: China would expect substance, not empty talks. Mr Zhao reiterated the belief that healthy stable development serves the interests of both countries and that Australia and China will need to reach a consensus on the future direction of bilateral relations.

Report by Niki Beri, AIIA NSW intern

Peter’s Institute Presentation On Gough’s 1971 Trip To China

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Fifty years after Whitlam’s breakthrough China trip, the Morrison government could learn much from it

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Historical anniversaries sometimes – not always – provide an opportunity to take stock. Rarely do two anniversaries coincide that encourage such an opportunity.

That is the case with the 50th anniversary on July 3 of the breakthrough Gough Whitlam visit to China and the July 1 centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CCP).

Australia needs to take stock of a troubled relationship with its dominant trading partner and guarantor of its economic well-being.

The two anniversaries, within a few days of each other, should remind us of both the costs and benefits of a complex relationship, and indeed the challenges and threats.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech marking the July 1 centenary of the founding of the CCP in Shanghai by a group of leftist intellectuals could hardly have been more confrontational.

We will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.

By any standards, this was a nationalistic and xenophobic speech designed for domestic consumption. But it was also aimed directly at the United States and its allies, including Australia. It was not an address designed to lower the temperature in China’s increasingly fraught relationships with the outside world.

Read more: The Communist Party claims to have brought prosperity and equality to China. Here's the real impact of its rule

In some ways, the speech marked a throwback to the sort of language that defined China’s relationships with its perceived enemies in an earlier Maoist era. Xi’s words might be dismissed as propaganda, but in an era of aggressive “wolf warrior” Chinese diplomacy, they represent a new stage in how Beijing views what it perceives to be a hostile international environment.

Xi’s speech was effectively a call to arms by a Chinese leader who has emerged as his country’s new emperor.

In that regard, Xi is a successor to Mao Zedong and not Deng Xiaoping, who exercised power mostly behind the scenes.

gough whitlam china visit

Xi might have dressed himself in a colour-coded grey Mao suit identical to that worn by Mao when he proclaimed the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949, but there is not much that is grey about his ambitions for his country.

In one of more pointed sentences in an hour-long speech , he said:

The Chinese people are not only good at destroying an old world, but also good at building a new world.

In Xi’s view, China’s Belt and Road thoroughfare does not stop at its frontiers. Whether we like it or not, the Chinese president’s speech marks an aggressive phase in what is clearly perceived by Beijing’s mandarins as a new and more hostile environment.

All this brings us back to the anniversary of the Whitlam outreach to China in 1971 . Documents associated with that historic visit, usefully published by The Australian, remind us that in an earlier era Australia was well-served by a politician capable of navigating potentially treacherous diplomatic terrain.

At the time, the opposition leader, still 18 months away from becoming prime minister, went to Beijing to distinguish Labor from a stale Coalition facsimile of US policy.

At the heart of the Whitlam mission was to navigate a way for Australia to establish diplomatic relations with China. He needed to accommodate the vexed Taiwan issue so as not to lay himself open to accusations he had “sold out” the Taiwanese.

Whitlam’s own dispatches , published by The Australian, and independent accounts of his exchanges with Premier Zhou Enlai, revealed he more than held his own with China’s master diplomat. These included, principally, the question of Taiwan in what became the blueprint for Australia’s “one China policy” .

This stated that “Australia adheres to a one China policy which means we do not recognise Taiwan as a country, but we maintain economic and cultural ties”. This conforms more or less with the American formula published in the Shanghai Communique of February 1972, signed by US President Richard Nixon and Zhou.

gough whitlam china visit

Whitlam was lucky politically in the sense that no sooner had then Prime Minister William McMahon berated him for allowing himself to be “ played as a fisherman plays a trout ” by Zhou, it emerged that even as the opposition leader was in Beijing, US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger was in the Chinese capital arranging a visit by Nixon.

Whitlam’s timing could hardly have been more advantageous to him politically, and more propitious from an Australian point of view. The newly-elected Whitlam government recognised the “one China” formula as one of its first acts after being elected in December 1972.

This was followed by more than four decades of relatively harmonious relations between Canberra and Beijing, upset on occasions by episodes like the Tiananmen massacre. That was until China began to assert itself more aggressively in its own neighbourhood, and ours.

On the 50th anniversary of Whitlam’s ground-breaking mission to Beijing, it is reasonable to ask how he would have managed relations with a more assertive China in this latest period?

Since Whitlam is no longer with us, the words of Australia’s first ambassador to China and Whitlam’s interpreter on his 1971 China mission might be useful.

In the view of Stephen FitzGerald, Australia needs to find a way to make use of both formal diplomatic channels, and, if necessary, and maybe preferably, “back channels”. This is the realpolitik argument that tends to be ignored in Canberra these days, where China policy is dominated by the national security establishment.

It is a different China but that does not absolve us of the responsibility of trying to engaged with it. It does not matter what you think about the government and, let’s face it, the government in China when Whitlam went in 1971 was not exactly a loveable government. China is now economically bigger, more powerful, but you have to engage with a country like whatever you think of it. This is what Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam are doing.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison got similar advice last month from Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong), whose message was that China’s rise is a fact of life and needs to be managed in a way that avoids confrontation, if possible.

You don’t have to become like them, neither can you hope to make them become like you […] There will be rough spots and you have to deal with that. But deal with them as issues in a partnership which you want to keep going and not issues, which add up to an adversary which you are trying to suppress.

On the anniversary of the Whitlam breakthrough these sentiments may be all very well, but the reasonable question is what the choice is.

Morrison and his foreign policy team should pay particular attention to Whitlam’s emphasis in his conversations with Zhou and in his written accounts of his visit to China to Australia’s own significance as a middle power seeking to play a constructive role in the region.

Read more: Timeline of a broken relationship: how China and Australia went from chilly to barely speaking

This was Whitlam’s way of conveying to the Chinese that Canberra, under his leadership, would seek to define itself and its own interests from those of its American ally. That is, not in contradiction to Washington necessarily, but from Australia’s own middle-power standpoint.

This is what could be described as statecraft, a quality absent from Australian diplomacy these days.

Morrison and his advisers might pay heed to these lessons if he is to get Australia out of the diplomatic cul de sac with China in which it finds itself.

A bit of creative statecraft, along lines suggested by FitzGerald, would not go astray.

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Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The author Chen Hong with Gough Whitlam.  Photo: Courtesy of Chen Hong

The author Chen Hong with Gough Whitlam. Photo: Courtesy of Chen Hong

gough whitlam china visit

The latest Chinese public opinion poll on Australia conducted by the Global Times Research Center showed that the ...

gough whitlam china visit

To improve China-Australia relations, the ball is in Australia's court,a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.

gough whitlam china visit

Editor’s Note: Tensions between China and Australia have risen in line with the Morrison government’s foreign policy. The latest ...

gough whitlam china visit

Anthony Albanese confirms he will visit China later this year

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed he will fly to Beijing in the next two months to hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the 50 th  anniversary of Gough Whitlam's historic visit to China.

Key points:

  • Malcolm Turnbull was the last Australian prime minister to visit China
  • Anthony Albanese met with Xi Jinping in Bali last year, which was seen as a stabilisation of relations 
  • He announced his looming visit after meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Indonesia 

The visit will be the first by an Australian prime minister to China since 2016.

Mr Albanese had been widely tipped to visit China this year, having met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in Bali last year.

That meeting was widely seen as the stabilising of relations between the two nations following years of tension. 

In recent years, China imposed crippling trade sanctions on Australian imports. It came in the aftermath of the then-Coalition government supporting an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19. 

Anthony Albanese and Xi Jinping smiling and shaking hands

Mr Albanese made the announcement after holding "respectful" and "constructive" talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Jakarta.

He told journalists that he told the premier he would accept President Xi's invitation to visit China "later this year at a mutually agreeable time."

"The cooperation and engagement between our two countries is always improved when there is a dialogue, when there is discussion, that is how you get mutual agreement, mutual respect and advance the interests of both our nations," he said.

The prime minister said he had used the meeting to raise the cases of imprisoned Australians Yang Hengjun and Cheng Lei, who recently marked three years in jail .

"I raised Cheng Lei and her case and put forward my view — which is the view I think that Australians have … that Australians are very much conscious of this case and they want to see Cheung Lei reunited with her children," he told reporters.

Journalist Cheng Lei is seen smiling while seated with the Shanghai waterfront in the background.

Mr Albanese also said he had raised the cases of three Australians "sentenced to capital punishment" in China and that Premier Li had listened "respectfully" to Australia's concerns.

One of those cases is likely former actor Karm Gillespie, who was sentenced to death for smuggling ice into China in late 2013.

But it's not clear who the other Australians are.

Australia still seeking an end to trade war

Mr Albanese said he had also pressed China to keep on unwinding trade impediments in the wake of Beijing's move to drop barley tariffs last month.

Australia has proposed that it pause WTO action against China over wine tariffs if Beijing agrees to conduct a rapid review of those barriers – but hasn't yet received a formal response.

A 1970s photo of Gough Whitlam in a Chinese square, as lines of dancers perform for him

The prime minister said he hadn't specifically raised the wine tariffs but that both leaders had "acknowledged" the barley dispute had been resolved and that both countries had an "interest in working these issues through."

He also said he raised Australia's concerns about humans rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.

Beijing has been stuck in an increasingly acrimonious disputes with several neighbours after releasing its latest official map, which includes disputed border territories that India also claims, as well as large swathes of the South China Sea claimed by South-East Asian nations

PM Turnbull and Pres Xi Jinping shake hand in front of flags

Mr Albanese wouldn't be drawn on whether he'd pressed Premier Li over regional tensions, although in his opening statement he said he was keen to discuss "geostrategic issues, with a view to maintaining stability and managing competition peacefully."

"We don't go into every detail of meetings held here," he said.

"I've said I raised human rights issues. I also raised issues which are the subject of discussion in the region including Taiwan and including the South China Sea."

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IMAGES

  1. Gough Whitlam visiting the Echo Wall on diplomatic trip to China

    gough whitlam china visit

  2. Gough Whitlam: my mission to China

    gough whitlam china visit

  3. Whitlam Institute Foreign Affairs

    gough whitlam china visit

  4. 1971: Gough Whitlam visits China

    gough whitlam china visit

  5. Whitlam in China • Inside Story

    gough whitlam china visit

  6. 1971: Gough Whitlam visits China

    gough whitlam china visit

COMMENTS

  1. 1971: Gough Whitlam visits China

    The Whitlam Institute commemorates this historic visit and its impact on Australia-China relations. Gough Whitlam's strategic, respectful, informed and independent approach to diplomacy established a new place for Australia in the World. Fifty years on, much can be drawn from this approach in how we tackle the foreign policy challenges of today.

  2. When Gough Whitlam went to Beijing, towering over all

    Gough Whitlam on the Great Wall of China in 1971, as leader of the opposition. Two years and three months previously, in 1971, Whitlam had taken an immense political risk by making his first visit ...

  3. Whitlam in China • Inside Story

    Gough Whitlam's visit to China in 1971 was a turning point in relations between the two countries. But luck also played a part in this audacious mission. Billy Griffiths 22 October 2014 3190 words. "A stroke of genius": Gough Whitlam speaking to journalists after his return from China in mid 1971. National Library of Australia.

  4. Gough Whitlam visiting the Echo Wall on diplomatic trip to China

    About this record. This is a black-and-white photograph of the Australian Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam during his historic visit to China between 31 October and 4 November 1973. Dressed in a long coat, Whitlam has his ear to part of the circular Echo Wall in the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Further along the wall, others are doing the same.

  5. Fifty years after Whitlam's breakthrough China trip, the Morrison

    Gough Whitlam made a significant trip to China in 1971. Now, with tensions between the two countries showing no signs of abating, it may be time to look to his example, writes Tony Walker.

  6. 50 years after Gough Whitlam established diplomatic relations with

    An interesting sidelight to the Whitlam visit to China in 1971 is that in 1954, as the new member for Werriwa, he had called for recognition of China in his first speech.

  7. Gough Whitlam's historic China trip remembered 50 years later

    This year marks 50 years since Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam's historic trip to China.Subscribe: http://ab.co/1svxLVEIn this never before seen foot...

  8. The 1971 meeting that defined the relationship with China for decades

    Walsh, 83, spoke to the Financial Review this week ahead of the 50th anniversary of Whitlam's China visit, which paved the way for the establishment of diplomatic relations a year later in 1972 ...

  9. Gough Whitlam's China visit was bold, inspired

    When Gough Whitlam went to China in 1971, the country meant little in Australia's economic and trade calculations; it was seldom visited by Australians and the Chinese rarely strayed outside ...

  10. For the Record

    Speaking to a conference of historians in July 2001, Gough Whitlam said "I make two pleas: Go to the documents; check the chronology". It is in this spirit that the Whitlam Institute is publishing this collection of historical documents related to Gough Whitlam's historic mission to China in 1971. Graham Freudenberg, a member of the 1971 ...

  11. 50th anniversary of Gough Whitlam's visit to China

    This year marks 50 years since Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam's historic trip to China. In this never before seen footage, we take a look back at this memorable state visit behind the ...

  12. Whitlam's trip to China started as an adventure and ended with a coup

    When Gough Whitlam decided to go on his ground-breaking trip to Beijing 50 years ago, he tracked down Stephen FitzGerald in a Canberra pub to ask him along. Stephen FitzGerald Jul 1, 2021 - 8.00am

  13. Whitlam's Visit to China: 50 Years On

    On Tuesday 30 November, the Australian Institute of International Affairs NSW held an event to mark the 50th anniversary of the visit to Beijing by Gough Whi...

  14. The Whitlam visit to China 50 years on

    On Tuesday 30 November, the Australian Institute of International Affairs NSW held an event to mark the 50 th anniversary of the visit to Beijing by Gough Whitlam, then leader of the opposition in the Australian parliament. The Institute was addressed by Mr Zhao Wenfei, Deputy Consul General at the Chinese Consulate General in Sydney, and Mr Peter Phillips, former diplomat and China political ...

  15. Gough Whitlam's delegation to China, 50 years on

    When Gough Whitlam arrived in Peking just before midnight on July 3, ... That, in many ways, is the legacy of Whitlam's visit to China 50 years ago. On returning to Australia, FitzGerald found ...

  16. Whitlam's visit decisive in our view of China, and ourselves

    On 3 July 1971, while still leader of the opposition, Gough Whitlam landed in Beijing, to discuss the terms of a Labor government's recognition of the People's Republic of China. Gough Whitlam ...

  17. 50th Anniversary of Gough Whitlam's 1971 Visit to China

    Chau Chak Wing Foundation was proud to join the other sponsors - the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University, the Australia China Business Council...

  18. Fifty years after Whitlam's breakthrough China trip, the Morrison

    That is the case with the 50th anniversary on July 3 of the breakthrough Gough Whitlam visit to China and the July 1 centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CCP).

  19. In China, Albanese Must Dare to Tread Where Whitlam Didn't 50 years ago

    Daniela Gavshon. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's visit to China, starting on Saturday, marks the 50th anniversary of the first visit by an Australian prime minister, Gough Whitlam, in 1973 ...

  20. Gough Whitlam's visit to China in 1973 had a 'sense of history'

    Gough Whitlam is due to arrive in China in October 1973 for his first visit as prime minister. I write to him about the visit and after the policy issues I raise the national anthem. There's a ...

  21. 50 years after Whitlam's China visit, it's imperative for Canberra

    50 years after Gough Whitlam's visit to China, it is imperative today's politicians in Canberra should modestly learn his political sagacity. Australia's anti-China campaign has reaped in ...

  22. Anthony Albanese confirms he will visit China later this year

    The prime minister says he will travel to China to mark the 50th anniversary of former PM Gough Whitlam's historic visit to the country, also becoming the first Australian leader to go to China ...

  23. Whitlam's birthday surprise: the US was shifting on China too

    On July 11, 1971, five days after leaving China, then opposition leader Gough Whitlam was handed one of the most remarkable vindications of any politician's judgment in history.