• The PM's description of Asia's explosive growth and the opportunities it offers was never accompanied by any warnings about the potential downsides, particularly the fact that Australia's relative influence in the region will decline as the region's developing economies continue their explosive growth.
  • In a sense, then, the PM avoided what we might call the Hugh White question, which asks whether Australia is prepared to do what it must in order to remain a middle power, or whether we will drift toward a more New Zealand-like small power status.
  • This is not only a military question about how much we're prepared to spend on defence, but also a population question (which will determine our economic size and the size of our tax base). From my scan of the White Paper, it altogether avoids any recommendations about Australia's population. Gillard herself avoided the 'big Australia' issue when it was put to her in the press conference.
• The point which the media and Opposition will no doubt focus on is the lack of funding promised in the White Paper. The PM listed some quite modest immediate spending initiatives in her speech, including a plan to expand the Australia Awards scheme to allow more Australians to study in Asia, and vice versa, no doubt meant to blunt Coalition attacks that the Government has not embraced their new Colombo Plan initiative.
  • The White Paper commits Australia to modestly increasing its diplomatic representation in the region, but there's no overall funding boost for DFAT.
• The PM was at her feistiest when it came to media criticism. In both the speech and press conference, she referred to the heavy media emphasis on economic news from the US and Europe. But she wanted to see less of Angela Merkel emerging from meetings looking 'harried and stressed', and more economic news from China, Japan, Indonesia and elsewhere in the region.

We'll have much more on this topic over coming days and weeks. Stay tuned and send us your thoughts on blogeditor@lowyinstitute.org.

This is the nature of the White Paper and it's difficult to know what else it could have been or done in the circumstances. It would be amazing if the authors had been able to come up with a radically new viewpoint: we've been thinking about these issues for decades. Nor is there room for dramatic new policy initiatives, in a budget-constrained world.

The risks, problems and trade-offs are equally well known, and it would cast a gloomy shadow over this positive outlook if the document dwelt in detail on all the things that might go wrong, the policy dilemmas and the delicate paths our diplomacy will have to tread.

It would have been unhelpful, for example, to go deeply into the vexed security issues raised by the Hugh White debate. It would be equally unhelpful to agonise too much over the challenge of straddling our relationship with the US (our historical best friend) and China (our biggest trading partner). If in the past we have tended to view Asia through the US prism, this is not the place to sort out whether the future lies with Asia alone or with the Asia Pacific. We know without reminder, for instance, that we have little to offer on issues such as South China Sea disputes. We know we will often be treading on eggshells to keep a balance between Japan and China.

Even confining ourselves to economics, focusing on the positive and downplaying the difficulties has some attraction. The Doha Round trade negotiations can rate a positive mention without the need to say that it is effectively dead. The Trans-Pacific Partnership can be held up as a high quality trade model without mentioning that the bar is set so high that our main trading partner will not be able to join in the foreseeable future.

Of course we can still talk trade with China through the regional arrangements. Regional integration is easy to talk about but hard to implement, partly because China is an elephant in the canoe, hard to accommodate because it is so big, confident, powerful and ready to right perceived historical wrongs. But why fret about these problems when Australia, as a late arrival in these regional arrangements, can be no more than a bit player in resolving these difficulties? Why spend time lamenting that we were slow to join the ASEAN sphere and are not part of the Chiang Mai Initiative, the basis of much regional economic dialogue?

From Australia's internal policy perspective, there are unresolved issues in foreign investment. China understandably looks to Australia to provide an important element of resource security, but if this is given in the form of foreign ownership, the scale of the Chinese resource-security objectives and the uni-dimensional resources focus will run up against domestic sensitivities. With resource policy spread between federal and state levels, there are many opportunities to offend foreigner investors while at the same time selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. But the White Paper is not the place to resolve this.

When it comes to our close neighbor Indonesia, we are still groping to find substantive dialogue issues which are not tension riddled crisis resolution, whether it is boat people or drug convictions. We know that Papua is waiting to destabilise the relationship in one way or another. The live cattle debacle was a reminder that mutual incomprehension still characterises this relationship.

Australian business still finds Indonesia an uncomfortable environment. The inhibiting travel advisory has finally gone, but now business has to worry that the Australian legal system will prosecute them for business practices which are the norm not just in Indonesia, but just about everywhere in Asia. There seems no way to raise the tone and quantity of journalistic reporting.

Long ago, wise heads developed the view that the best we could hope for is that there would be enough ballast in the diplomatic relationship to see us through these tribulations. What more can be offered?

If the White Paper sounds complacent, there is certainly a realistic prospect that Australia will be borne along in the slipstream of this historically unprecedented burst of economic growth that began with Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in the 1960s and still has far to run in the unfinished growth stories of China, India, Indonesia and our other Asian neighbours. It will be up to others to explore the detail of what might go wrong, and what more could be done to smooth this ride.

Photo by Flickr user go_nils.

 
The White Paper gives Julia Gillard a big bit of Asia policy that does not have Kevin Rudd's name on it, nor does it reflect his considerable foreign policy intellect. That, bluntly, was always part of its political purpose. 

One reason the Asian Century process had to be run by the Prime Minister's Department was that it could never have been given to a Foreign Affairs Department headed by K Rudd. Minders United saw one benefit of releasing the White Paper at the weekend as the chance to mount a sizeable counter attack to the raid by a Rudd stalwart, Maxine McKew, who was releasing her book on the regicide. Peter Hartcher captures exactly one element of the politics of the White Paper launch:

Knowing the publication date for McKew's book weeks in advance, the government has decided to deliver its long-delayed Asian Century white paper on Sunday. This is transparently an effort to drown McKew's accusatory voice, to stop the story rolling into the new parliamentary sitting week. Gillard plans simply to roll over McKew.

Not all political considerations are so dastardly. In the good-policy-can-be-good-politics category it is noteworthy how the White Paper places education at the centre of much of its discussion. Remember that when Julia Gillard made her famous comment that she had no feel for foreign policy it was to make the contrasting point that her real passion was for education.

Framing the Asian Century as one that will be won in the classrooms is to shift the game onto Gillard's ground. The political drumbeat from Gillard is that she is getting on with governing and some of that drumming is getting through. 

The Australian newspaper had three headline dot points across the top of its front page today. Two of them were from the White Paper ('Language option for all children' and 'Hawke-Keating legacy invoked'). The third point was what truly mattered for Minders United: 'Newspoll: Labor draws level'; the latest opinion poll has the government tied 50-50 with the Opposition in the two-party preferred vote. One year out from the election, this Government thinks it is now in with a chance.

The political drumbeat sets the rhythm for policy. So building on these elements of process and policy, the next column will consider how the Asian Century White Paper stacks up as policy. Or, to use the politico-speak common at Minders United: What's the vision? Give us the narrative!

Photo courtesy of Lowy Institute/Sydney Heads.

This is an important national priority, there's only so much money and we are in a time of fiscal consolidation...you do have to take your place around the expenditure review committee table and engage in a bit of cut and thrust, but this, for us, over time, I think is a very important priority; we do ask our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through our posts around the world to do some amazing work for us, and that is going to grow and we need it to grow.

So, a big priority, but small evidence of a sense of urgency or budget imperative to make the dream a reality.

The second major report is that of Joint Standing Committee (Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee) on Australia's overseas representation, the culmination of 13 months' work by the sub-committee and launched yesterday, just one day after the Asian Century White Paper.

In language far less equivocal than the PM's, Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Nick Champion MP summed up the inquiry's findings: 'Australia's diplomatic network is seriously deficient and does not reflect Australia's true international standing.' 

Quoting our submissions to the inquiry and adopting our recommendations in Diplomatic Disrepair, Mr Champion called for an increase of at least 20 diplomatic posts to the network's existing 95, to build an overseas network far closer to the OECD average of 133 missions distributed across the 193 nations of the UN. To achieve this, the report cleverly recommends indexing DFAT's budget to a fixed proportion of GDP (a proportion which has been falling over the past quarter of a century), to bring Australia's diplomatic network to a level commensurate with its standing in the G20 and OECD.

Apart from this bold, and for us, long-awaited, call for increased support for Australia's principal agency for the nation's international engagement, the report makes some constructive recommendations to address the well-known problems confronting the indefatigable Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade: 

• Examine and articulate Government's long-term goals for its whole of government representation overseas in a white paper which outlines the value and benefits of the overseas network, sets out the criteria for establishing new posts and national priorities for expanding the network, and raises the public profile of the work and value of Australia's diplomatic network.
• Introduce practical measures (like fees or levies) to help fund the burgeoning consular load.    
• Broaden and deepen the contacts and relationships between DFAT and Austrade and Australian business to foster better understanding and provide better assistance.
• Address the issue of effective global distribution of trade representation (by Austrade and the various State and territory trade offices around the world) by placing within COAG's remit the task of reviewing the most effective location and coordination of State and Commonwealth trade representations to best serve the national interest.
• Open a new post in East Java (as per the Asian Century White Paper recommendation). The Committee report also welcomes the newly-announced post in Senegal and reviews in detail the myriad proposals for new posts, but refrains from recommending other post openings without a rigorous assessment by DFAT and the proposed diplomacy white paper.
• Finally, in a comprehensive set of recommendations which are probably solely attributable to the formidable body of work by former Lowy Institute Research Fellow Fergus Hanson, the report recommends an Office of Ediplomacy to bring DFAT's use of new media platforms into the 21st century and the immediate refurbishment of the often clunky Australian embassy websites.

So, the White Paper is, as my colleague Rory Medcalf succinctly observed yesterday, bold on vision but short on funding, while the Joint Standing Committee Inquiry report is just plain bold.

Let's hope that, together, the two reports will finally draw attention to Australia's neglected, overstretched and underfunded diplomatic service, and elicit a long-overdue and concrete commitment to rebuilding Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade so it can serve Australia's interests properly.

Photo by Flickr user timtom.ch.

Also notable, though more consistent with the 2009 Defence White Paper, is the depiction of the significant military spending increases in our region as part of a modernisation of Asia's militaries, rather than part of an arms race. This is the mainstream view among scholars and commentators, given most of the defence spending seems driven by domestic factors such as economic growth and increasing capacity, rather than by high levels of international tension.

While the South China Sea has been a source of increasing competition and acrimony, it will be some years before we can be sure this has led directly to new arms purchases. For now, it seems the Australian Government is maintaining its 2009 view that the region is modernising, rather than getting into an arms race. I'd recommend this lecture by Geoffrey Till if readers want to go into the debates and arguments about an arms race in Asia.

Finally, the Asian Century White Paper takes a broad view of security, with multiple mentions of cooperative or 'sustainable' security. It doesn't quite endorse Paul Keating's famous line that Australia should seek security in Asia rather than from it, but it does argue Australia should continue to promote a 'region of sustainable security in which habits of cooperation are the norm'. This is not just about the US-China relationship, but also non-traditional security challenges such as terrorism, piracy, criminal networks and the environment.

The concept of human security is also strongly embraced, featuring in one of the national objectives (#21), which should please the authors of a compelling new book on the integration of human security into Australia's foreign policy.

We're told the Defence White Paper will 'set out in more detail the role we will play with regard to defence and security throughout our region'. If Australia truly is to find its place in the Asian Century, then ensuring Defence White Paper supports the economic and foreign policy goals of the Asian Century White Paper will be an important step.

Photo courtesy of Lowy Institute/Sydney Heads.

Engaging with Asia means understanding a range of cultural factors. But if we want to understand them, we need first to understand ourselves. So who are we? Where do we come from?

We are primarily a European transplanted community with growing minorities of ethnic and religious groups not directly associated with that heritage. Essentially, Australia is part of the English speaking world sometimes described as the 'Anglosphere', with stronger ties to countries like Britain, New Zealand, the US and Canada than most of our immediate neighbours. Our laws, customs, political system, language and colonial history are intimately tied to our European (principally British and Irish) ancestry.

Australia aspires to be a 'fair, multicultural and cohesive society', but it does so building on the foundations of a transplanted society influenced by a Judaeo-Christian world view, washed through the reformation, the Enlightenment, European revolutions, modernism and post-modernism. Life might not necessarily be nasty, brutish and short any more, but it is only a once-off. You either go to heaven or hell or just cease to be, depending on your worldview. Few of us seriously think we will come back again reincarnated.

To cap it off, we Australians have venerated the idea of mateship, an egalitarian notion that many outsiders see as the down-under form of cronyism linked to corruption and exclusion of foreigners.

Armed with this self awareness, we need to learn more about the worldviews of our neighbours. In mainland Southeast Asia, for instance, Buddhism is a profoundly influential factor in shaping people's thinking about their place in the world and ours. But few Australians understand the significance that karma and reincarnation play in shaping day-to-day thinking. Some Australians dismiss this religiosity as a veneer, but in fact it runs deep and catches most secular Aussies by surprise.

Similarly, in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and southern Philippines, Islam infuses much of the cultural life. The world of Dar al-Harb (the abode of war, often associated with the West) and Dar al-Islam (the abode of peace, or the Islamic world) resonate strongly for Muslims but sounds like a caricature to post-modern Western-thinking Australians. That cultural understanding (or lack of it) has a spillover effect on business and education. It is important for us to understand the differences and, informed by that understanding, tailor our engagement with cultural awareness and sensitivity.

As we look to emphasise Asian languages and cultures in our education as part of the White Paper's direction, we should be mindful of who we are and where we came from and how the differences in our cultures create rub points. Our neighbors are under no illusions. As we seek to engage and become more integrated into the region, neither should we be.

Photo by Flickr user Mark Fischer.

Yet while the US only ranked fifth in my crude analysis, those 166 mentions are rather impressive when you consider the type and context. The US is mostly mentioned in terms of trade and security. In fact it dominates the security elements of the White Paper. The White Paper notes that Asia's rising economies were 'major beneficiaries of the open global trading system established under United States leadership after World War II' and that the security guarantees provided by the US to its key allies in the region, 'especially Japan and South Korea, and the development of an effective working relationship between Washington and Beijing after 1972, provided strategic (and business) confidence that helped frame and support the region's economic development'.

The core argument for the importance of the US to Australian and regional security comes on p.231:

We consider that a strong and consistent United States presence in the region will be as important in providing future confidence in Asia's rapidly changing strategic environment as it has been in the past. We will continue to support US engagement in the region and its rebalancing to the Asia–Pacific, including through deepening our defence engagement with the US and regional partners.

Of all the countries mentioned in this document, it allocates the US a central and pivotal role, not only in Asia's past, but also for its future.

Significantly though, the White Paper does not take a wholly sycophantic view of the US. It also acknowledges that while 'our alliance with the United States remains as strong as ever', Asia's continued growth won't occur in a 'strategic vacuum'. Stable relations among the 'major powers in Asia and the Pacific – China, India, Indonesia, Japan and the United States – will remain fundamental to prosperity and security in the region and will require sustained effort'.

One of the most interesting lines in the White Paper is the statement 'this is not a world in which anything like a containment policy can work or be in our national interests'. As Andrew Carr pointed out in his post, this is a clear message that 'Australia hopes is read in Washington as much as Beijing'.

In the end, the US is not a minor player. Australia has already chosen the US as its preferred security partner for the Asian Century and the White Paper reflects the critical role this relationship will play in the future. The emphasis on countries other than the US is about focusing attention on other partners and rising powers and the need to engage many of them in ways that reflect the strength of the US-Australian bilateral relationship. 

Photo Auspic/Prime Minister's Office.

This thinking may just reflect the educated mindset of the small sample of participants at our conference. But if we consider that this group could very well be the future leaders of the PNG, the influence Australia is accustomed to exerting in Papua New Guinea may not be as durable as it seems.

The Australian Government's White Paper did not make mention of Papua New Guinea or other Pacific Islands. The economic status and tiny populations of Pacific Islands (PNG aside) tends to exclude them from Australian thinking about the rise of Asia. PNG's economy is forecast to grow at a respectable 7.7% in 2012, comparable to growth rates in the emerging economies of Asia. Its population of 6.7 million is also growing fast. Like Australia, PNG is positioning itself to build on Asian interest in its resources.

The White Paper was written for an Australian audience but Australia is also well placed to exchange ideas with an emerging and engaged audience in Papua New Guinea on the challenges of forging a prosperous future in the Asian century.

Photo by Flickr user 350.org.

This will be viewed as a relatively inconsequential document for those in Washington but it seems intrinsically necessary that the US take documents such as these more seriously. If the US would undertake a similar effort in order to understand its role in the region, the scope and scale of their role would be accessible to both a domestic and international audience and it would give them a much greater understanding into the quick progression occurring in the region.

Alex Jones is studying for a Masters in Political Economy at Sydney University:

The White Paper is more than a road map for Australia’s engagement with Asian in the coming decades, it is something for our neighbours to mull over and take note of what role Australia might play. For Australian boys and girls, the language policy is a positive step but only half the picture.

The United States' engagement with Asia, particularly China, remains firmly focused inwards on the security and economic implications for its own superpower status. Strategic alliances splinter trust across the region while one can only imagine what Mitt Romney would do to US-Sino relations if elected. The US does not have a clear plan for the region as a whole and its relationship with China is a lot more tense than the surface might suggest. In the rest of the West Europe is currently far too overwhelmed with local issues to be making coherent external approaches.

Meanwhile African and South American relations have been driven by China's economy but no countries from either continent have made significant attempts to spread this connection across Asia. Also the future of China's ties are yet to be fully tested by Africa's stability and the tendency by some South American countries to follow the path nationalisation.

Apart from a putting in writing the broad direction that Australian education and industry was already facing, this is a billboard advertisement to grab the attention of Asia's leaders. No other country has taken such steps to produce such a positive and inclusive blueprint.

The language plan has certainly drawn the most attention. Putting aside questions about funding and eventual uptake, the languages selected show Australia wants to embrace the region as a whole, but those with the most potential have been chosen. Mandarin was always a given but that Japanese remains shows that the Paper's authors want to keep the old ties. Despite a couple decades of little growth, it is still a well-developed market that needs to be served. It is a pity Korean could not also be included as its potential for Australia is arguably on par with Japan. Including Indonesian and Hindi are big statements to show commitment beyond China and old friends. Australian relations with both Indonesia and India need more attention before benefits can be secured, in fact, some areas are in need of fundamental repair. Inclusion of these two languages is a positive step towards in a renewed direction. 

Language is vital but delivering an 'Asian-literate' generation still lacks an important element; much can be learnt from the region's history. Relations between Asia's big three economies of Japan, South Korea and China are extremely complex and understanding these, amongst other, historical influences will lead to a better appreciation of the factors affecting trading patterns, security and development in the region. Not that European history and Australia's links to that history should be forgotten, but Asian history needs to include more than a brief history of China, the Korean war and Vietnam war.

The White Paper is Australia's effort to be taken as an important future partner. But for Australian boys and girls, talking the talk is one thing, knowing the history will provide a complete understanding of the region.

They get a gander in the section on defence and security engagement, and Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines are identified as 'active regional powers'. The White Paper notes the conclusion of the Malaysia-Australia Free Trade Agreement and plans to negotiate similar agreements with Singapore and Thailand, along with Australia's ongoing commitment to working with the ILO and other multilateral bodies on issues such as sustainable development and fair work.

Vietnamese and Thai get a mention in a list of 'other' languages to be supported, and we are led to believe that Radio Australia will continue to broadcast in Vietnamese, Khmer and Burmese, as well as in Indonesian. Malaysia and Thailand join Indonesia in the list of countries with which Australia has formal working holiday arrangements, and the report signals the Government's plan to establish a full embassy in Phuket and a permanent ambassador to the ASEAN Secretariat.

Ultimately, however, I have a sinking feeling that this shopping list of initiatives lacks the kind of comprehensiveness and coherence needed if we are to truly engage with the complex and diverse place that is Southeast Asia. The language of the White Paper has been described in this blog as 'lofty and inspirational'. But where Southeast Asia is concerned, I was left wondering what the vision actually is.

Photo by Flickr user adaptorplug.

The White Paper is the biggest possible policy statement of the 'all change for Asia' position. This is a shift beyond the old political orthodoxy or implicit common ground in the arguments between Howard and Keating, who both thought Asia would mostly love us as we are. Howard famously saw no need to choose between our history and geography. Keating embraced geography over history but, apart from the need to ditch the monarchy, his mantra was about Australia integrating, not transforming.

Now the discussion is about what Australia must do within itself to adjust to Asia, as well as what Asia is doing to Australia; no longer is it merely a matter of what Australia can do for Asia.

The White Paper starts with the words, 'Asia's rise is changing the world', and then goes on to talk about all the ways Australia is going to have to shift to deal with the 'staggering scale and pace' of these 'profound' developments. That is a profoundly domestic document (well suited to Julia Gillard) as it ranges over the Asian impact on Australia's public service and executive suites and schools. Thus, domestic policies will have to supply the real details of many of the 25 national objectives on the White Paper's map or menu. The forthcoming education funding model, for instance, is going to carry quite an Asian Century load.

One interesting element in the responses to the White Paper is in all the ways the dogs didn't bark. The barking we have heard has been mostly about the lack of dollars, not about the direction.

Malcolm Cook remarks on the limited coverage by the tabloids. The tabloids are, indeed, important attack dogs because of their finely tuned populist noses. The idea of teaching Asian languages to every Australian kid did not, apparently, look like red meat to the redtops. Nothing to bark at there; back to rising electricity prices.

Malcolm's worry is that the tabloid lack of interest indicates Australians just don't want to think about Asia. Perhaps, but maybe many Australians, like the tabloids, didn't see much to get excited about: Asia is important? Yeah, got that memo a while ago. Asia is paying the national bills? Knew that. Just hope we don't have to get our heads around Mandarin to help the kids with the homework. Asia is our future? Tick! Get back to us when you've worked out the details. The people expect the polity to do the policy particulars.

In all the various reactions to the White Paper, there have been a lot of 'Yes, but...' responses (Yes, but where are the dollars?) and even been a bit of 'Yes, of course'. But there haven't been any vehement NO responses.

The Great Asia Project is the agreed position of every significant Australia political party. There is no anti-Asia element on the left, right or middle of Oz politics. Compare and contrast the Oz position with Britain, where Euro-scepticism amounting to Europhobia is a throbbing element of mainstream politics. In the geography-history stakes, many Poms would like to veto geography and escape back into history; that is not an option that has had much of a run in Oz politics for decades.

To use John Howard's phrase, 'every serious political leader in Australia' for four decades has been pushing The Great Asia Project and the effort has already changed the nation. From immigration policy to tariff levels, this country has been getting ready for the Asian Century for quite a while.

Julia Gillard's challenge is not just a matter of delivering the dollars to do what the White Paper promises. She also has to find ways to persuade and inspire to match the ambitions. The gap between vision and strategy is well captured by Paul Kelly:

In 40 years covering national governments I cannot recollect a previous vision statement that has been so ambitious nor a statement where the gulf between present outcomes and future benchmarks is so substantial.

In deciding to have the Asia Century inquiry in the first place, Gillard took close advice from Paul Keating. It was classic Keating conjuring that he could compress the essence of the White Paper into one vivid image. China and India, Keating said, are on track to becoming the largest economies in the world, and this is like switching the world's magnetic field: 'The intensity of this polarity shift is of such magnitude, all the filings of Australian foreign, trade, investment and cultural policy should find themselves going in the direction of that magnetic field.'

Gillard should sit down with Keating again to discuss the ups, downs and magnetic effects of trying to turn an Asian vision into Australian votes, much less a working policy.

Photo by Flickr user avlxyz.

Would there have been any 'voices from the region' not endorsing a balance? Not from India, not from Vietnam but neither from Indonesia; the basics haven't changed regardless of an eventual transformation from the old 'Pax Americana' to a new 'Pax Pacifica'; the one thing they want less than the a heavy US footprint in the Asia Pacific is none at all.

Some Australian experts have said the White Paper didn't go far enough: according to Dr John Blaxman the Australian Government and, especially, the people, haven't understood a thing about saving face and other allegedly typical Asian traits. Sam Bateman, former Australian Naval Commodore, writes from Singapore that the Asian perception of Australia is still anchored around the deputy sheriff role and thus the White Paper should have listened 'to more voices in the region itself rather than whole-heartedly endorsing US perspectives and initiatives'.

After 15 years in the Asian region, including four years in Australia, I would say to Dr Blaxman that just as there are drunken Aussies in Bali (and, incidentally, loutish Swiss in Pattaya) there is ignorance, prejudice and worse against Westerners in the emerging part of the Asia Pacific and especially in China. 

My personal experience is, the more one engages with Asians (if there is such a thing at all) on a courteous but direct and personal level, the better. As I teach my students, who typically come from all over the world including the Asia Pacific, it is a good thing to know the language when you do business in a foreign country but sometimes in the Asia Pacific it is even better not to know it, or at least not too well, as language, certainly Mandarin, can be a delicate domain reservé of natives.

Photo by Flickr user square(art).

To begin with, the positive language of the White Paper seems at odds with the government's increasingly unwelcoming immigration and asylum seeker policies. Notes Soutphommasane: 'For many, the retreat from population growth and immigration, along with a hardened posture on asylum seekers, could be seen as a proxy attack on the conditions for a multicultural Australia.'

The White Paper claims also that Australians with Asian heritage have become 'active participants in Australian community and civic life'. But Soutphommasane shows that they are largely absent from the country's national institutions. Parliament can only boast three politicians of non-European background: Penny Wong, Lisa Singh and the indigenous Liberal MP Ken Wyatt. Wong is Canberra's only Asian-born politician.

The Australian Defence Force does not do much better. The 2007 Defence Census showed that 94% of the permanent members of the ADF were born in Australia, the UK, Ireland or New Zealand. Only 1% of permanent members hail from Asia.

Nor does Australian television, with the obvious exception of SBS, hold up a mirror to the country. Neighbours has not had a character of Asian background who has lasted more than a year. Commercial television especially could do much better, and there is a commercial imperative to do so. The ratings success of shows like MasterChef and Australian Idol is no accident. Both are more representative of the new Australia.

'A form of Anglo-Celtic community still defines the theory and practice of government,' he notes, and animates its national stories. But even in the ANZAC legend can be found 'unlikely dashes' of Asian flavour. Consider the role at Gallipoli and in France of Billy Sing, a sniper who was born of a Chinese father and British mother.

What makes Don’t Go Back To Where You Came From especially resonant is that Soutphommasane is the son of refugees. His parents escaped Laos following the communist rise to power in 1975, and made their home, via France, in Sydney's western suburbs. His study, which is both a history of the massive demographic changes that have overtaken this country and also a manifesto for placing multiculturalism at the very heart of national life, makes a vital and timely contribution to the Asian Century debate. 

Australia is well served by its Beijing correspondents, with Stephen McDonell of the ABC and John Garnaut of Fairfax as notable stand-outs. Richard McGregor, an Australian journalist who covered China for the Financial Times, is also the author of the acclaimed The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers. Elsewhere in the region, there is no shortage of fine Australian journalists reporting back from Japan, Indonesia or Thailand. Just look at ABC's regional strength, with correspondents of the calibre of Zoe Daniel, Mark Willacy and Helen Brown.

But there are supply-side problems. Newsgathering in China is obviously enormously difficult, given the Communist Party's strongly authoritarian, censorious and secretive streaks. Even the most rudimentary information, like the date when the Communist Party conclave was due to end, is hard to come by, according to TIME's Hannah Beech. And it can be difficult for journalists to get accreditation, although China is probably more accessible now than outsiders would think.

Storytelling is also a challenge, and not only because of language and logistical barriers. We are witnessing a seismic global shift, but finding ways of telling that story, over and over, requires imagination as well as diligence.

I found this when serving as the BBC's South Asia correspondent based in Delhi. There were only so many times you could film a call centre or contrast the shimmering mirror glass headquarters of its global out-sourcing giants with the slum conditions nearby. As the BBC's Asia bureau editor Jo Floto told me: 'The story of China is a story of process — of social and economic change — rather than events.' That is why the Bo Xilai story was such a sensation: it was a running Chinese news story that demanded updates everyday.

Asian coverage, in Australia and beyond, suffers more from a shortage of popular demand rather than problems with supply. For the reasons that Michael and Sam discuss, it is inevitable that America's great carnival of democracy, with its rich human tableau, should generate more excitement that the rather monochrome, heavily stage-managed events in the Great Hall of the People. Inevitably, the race for the White House is more riveting than the make-up of the Politburo Standing Committee.

So I doubt whether there will ever be parity between the news coverage of America and China. Beijing is unlikely ever to have the news entertainment value of Washington, or box office stars like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. Better to hope that a more Asia-literate country will come to demand more Asian news, not out of a sense of geopolitical correctness but through genuine interest.

Clearly there is a long way to go. Just contrast the discrepancy in coverage on commercial news bulletins of the Chinese leadership transition with the visit of Charles and Camilla. In a sign of Australia's resilient Anglo-Celtic heritage, the cameras captured them on Melbourne Cup day watching from the VIP box as Green Moon, an Irish-bred horse, raced to victory.

Let's hope this kind of coverage of Asian Australians will also soon be a thing of the past: Channel Nine's A Current Affair 'racist beat-up' about the 'Asian invasion' of a shopping mall in the northwest Sydney suburb of Castle Hill, which was debunked within hours by the local paper. What Channel Nine put to air was not Australia in the Asian Century. It was Australia in the nineteenth century.

Photo by Flickr user slimmer_jimmer.

When I started reporting Australia's leader going to summits in the 1970s, the chance for prime ministerial multilateralism was decidedly limited. The PM got to go to the Commonwealth every two years to talk about Africa, while the new and exciting chance for summitry was offered by the South Pacific Forum. Apart from that, zilch!

Malcolm Fraser went to one ASEAN summit (they then occurred only once or twice a decade) and his pining to attend to the G7 never got beyond the wishing and hoping stage.

That era of famine has slowly given way to a feast of fly-away functions. The Asia summitry which has become a recurring element of the prime ministerial diary is more a reflection than a driver of an era of profound change. Yet constant summitry has shaped the job description of this Oz leader and all who will follow her. 

It was noteworthy (in the sense of being shocking and having few precedents) that The Australian started this week with an editorial praising Gillard's performance on the summit trail, 'successfully representing Australia on the world stage':

Only the most churlish would dispute that the Prime Minister deserves praise for the way she has represented our interests in the 10 overseas trips she has made in the past 12 months. She clearly would not lay claim to being a modern-day Talleyrand, but she has made good on her pledge when she made her "I'm not passionate about foreign affairs" admission to be "a feisty advocate" for our national interests.

Treasure that editorial endorsement for its rarity while accepting its accuracy.

Gillard has tracked John Howard in her summit trajectory, starting off as reluctant, even resistant, yet slowly growing in confidence through repeat exposure. Part of that evolution is the simple realisation, on reaching the summit, that all politicians, whatever system they emerge from, have similarities. An apparatchik is ever an apparatchik; they must always be able to count and reach to control. And all apparatchiks understand the rule Ronald Reagan urged on his negotiators: 'When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.'

So, in Phnom Penh, there was little light shed on the vexed issue of the South China Sea, but the heat keeps building. 

The East Asia Summit was also notable for the formal launch of a significant race between trade groupings centred on the US and China. Or to put the contest in the negative, one version of Asia's trade future that excludes China and another that excludes the US. Stephen Grenville gives an excellent account of these 'two different and perhaps competing approaches to trade liberalisation': the ASEAN-centred Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the US-sponsored Trans-Pacific Partnership. As I've argued previously, this is a contest between Chinese noodles and a US steak dinner, and all sides are becoming more explicit in noting that element of contest between the Asian future imagined by the lawyers and lobbyists in Washington against Asia's mandarins and moguls.

Australia is part of both efforts but claims that this competition can turn out to be complimentary. That is the optimistic view offered by the Asian Century White Paper while being explicit in seeing that a race is afoot:

Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership could create momentum for competitive liberalisation and put Australia on two complementary pathways to a free trade area of the Asia–Pacific. Australia welcomes and encourages these processes. We recognise that outcomes agreed in one negotiation that facilitate deeper economic integration will encourage new members to join, and also create pressure to adopt similar liberalisation in competing negotiations.

At the summit, the leaders can appear as complementary as they like. In the negotiating trenches, the words from this passage that count will be 'competition' and 'pressure'. The heat matters as much as the light.

The point about a rolling series of summits is to get some sense of cohesion and control in a deeply competitive environment. As Gillard flew back from her final leaders' meeting of the year, she could reflect that the Phnom Penh version, in both its geo-economic and geo-political dimensions, underscored the truth that what cannot be agreed at the summit is as important as what can be clinched.

Photo by Flickr user Julia Gillard.