Australia's Asian conundrum
A week which began with much of Australia enjoying a day off in celebration of the Queen's birthday ended with the start of a visit from China's Vice President Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao's heir apparent. He touched down during the weekend when Barack Obama was supposed to enjoy a spot of family sight-seeing in and around Sydney harbour, a visit deemed by Mr Obama's image-makers to be visually unhelpful at a time when the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is threatening to overwhelm his presidency.
All three events show how Australia continues to be pulled in different directions: the bonds of kinship with Britain are resilient and strong, the strategic relationship with America, as codified in the Anzus Treaty, remains the basis for its regional security, while its commercial rapport with China and other Asian countries explains much of its modern-day prosperity. China is Australia's top trading partner. Japan is number two.
The latest suggests that Australians themselves are undecided where their country fits within the world. Some 32% said Australia was more part of Asia, 31% said it was part of the Pacific, and 31% said it was not part of any region. Remarkably, 5% said it was part of Europe.
Kevin Rudd, who was captivated as a child by Gough Whitlam's breakthrough visit to China and went on to become fluent in mandarin, vowed to make Australia the most Asia-literate country in the western world. But is it happening?
The teaching of four Asian languages - Mandarin, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian - has long been part of the push to strengthen Australia's influence in the region. But new government figures show that the country has actually witnessed a decline in the number of schoolchildren learning Asian languages in the past decade - a 22% per cent slump.
So few students are studying Indonesian - nationwide, there are only 1,000 students in their final year at school studying the language - that it's feared its teaching could die out in Australian schools. Academics say that more schoolchildren were studying Asian languages in the 1960s than at the start of what many have dubbed the Asian century.
Even Australia's participation in the Football World Cup is illustrative of how its place in the world remains unfixed and unresolved. It speaks of Australia's new engagement with Asia, since the Socceroos are representing Asia, while New Zealand are Oceania's sole representative - and didn't the All Whites do extraordinarily well against Italy! It throws up evidence of the ties with America, the only other competing country which insists on calling the game "soccer" rather than "football". And there's a strong British connection, since most of the Socceroos make their highly-remunerated livings in the English Premier League.
So I'll end with the question asked in the Lowy Institute's survey: where does Australia fit within the region and the world?
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