Originally published by The Australian, 23 Apr 2010

By Rowan Callick

THIS evening, Kevin Rudd will deliver a long-awaited address over which he will have agonised in the early hours, following his arm-wrestling with the premiers over health.

The Prime Minister is speaking at his alma mater, the Australian National University, on “Australia and China in the World”. There is no topic on which he is better qualified to talk, but also none on which he has been so reluctant, in recent times, to do so publicly.

The section of the speech likely to be most enthusiastically applauded will be his heavily anticipated announcement of a massive grant – believed to be about $35 million – to establish one of the world’s leading research centres on China at the ANU, as revealed in The Australian.

Tomorrow he goes on to launch at the ANU – whose new chancellor is Gareth Evans – the National Security College, to be led by former adviser to John Howard and foreign affairs head Michael L’Estrange.

Rudd graduated with first-class honours in arts (Asian studies) at the ANU, majoring in Chinese language and history.

He enhanced his Chinese skills at the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. He was posted as a diplomat to Beijing in the late 1980s, and from 1996 to 1998 was the senior China consultant for KPMG Australia. Rudd – whose Chinese name is Lu Kewen – has since then worked hard to maintain his network of contacts in China, and to keep his spoken Chinese in working order.

His election, after a steady warming of the relationship under John Howard, aroused huge expectations both here and there of the rapid creation of the closest relationship yet between East and West; some claimed Australia would be a bridge between China and the industrialised world.

Bruce Hawker, a leading ALP spin doctor, hyperventilated in The South China Morning Post after Rudd’s election that it “heralds a new era in Sino-Australian relations. It will be a dynamic period, full of opportunity and promise on many fronts, with a bolder acknowledgement of the need for ever-closer relations between Canberra and Beijing.”

It has certainly proven dynamic, but not in the way anticipated. We have suffered in the past year rows over Chinese investment, the Stern Hu jailing, the visit of and film on Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, the Defence white paper warning of China’s rise, and the scandal over sacked defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon and his Chinese backers.

The negotiations over a free trade agreement with China have got almost nowhere in five years.

Rudd is not, of course, to blame for most – maybe any – of these tensions, but he has risked exacerbating the resulting awkwardness between the countries by failing to provide a clearer public steer.

Many perceive his China purdah as part of his determination to avoid arousing voter antipathy. But his China-savviness is also an asset. His popularity rose rapidly after his famous chat in Chinese with President Hu Jintao in Sydney before the 2007 election.

Probably, his reluctance to engage on the China controversies last year was more a function of his disappointment over the effect of his painstakingly drafted speech in Chinese at Beijing University two years ago, during his first visit to the country as PM.

He said then: “It is easy to see why people become fascinated with China.” That fascination remains fresh for Rudd, but he has not been afraid to disappoint those in Beijing who tend to assume that to know and love China means also loving its Communist Party and its governance.

In his speech, he famously offered China the role of zhengyou – true friend – who “offers unflinching advice and counsels restraint about matters of contention”. That kind of friendship didn’t reach first base, however – in part because earlier in that speech Rudd had in that spirit spoken of “significant human rights problems in Tibet”.

China’s leaders have been reluctant, to put it mildly, to embrace this somewhat presumptuous concept, Hu ticking him off about Tibet as he left China.

Since then, Rudd has tended to keep his own counsel about China, deputing Trade Minister Simon Crean and, to a lesser extent, Wayne Swan and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith to discuss this crucial relationship.

But now lessons are being learned on both sides from the spats of last year, the economic relationship is reaching ever higher ground and Chinese students continue to pour in. Vice-Premier Li Keqiang made a warm visit late last year, and China’s diplomats here have astutely grasped every opportunity to rebuild links.

It’s a good time for Rudd to be re-entering the China scene. And propitious that it is through the 70th George Morrison Lecture.

This honours the colourful Australian who enjoyed great celebrity in China for 20 years from 1894, as a journalist, political adviser and adventurer, and who was known in Australia as “Chinese” Morrison. Rudd may well toast Morrison’s uniqueness in that regard. He does not relish becoming “Chinese” Rudd. He will remind us tonight, though, that this remains a hugely important area for Australia. But it is one over which he has let his public absence cast too long a shadow.

 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/finally-pm-to-break-his-long-silence/story-e6frg6zo-1225857123563