We acknowledge this land that we meet on today is the traditional lands for Kaurna people and that we respect their spiritual relationship with their country.
We also acknowledge the Kaurna people as the custodians of the Adelaide region and that their cultural and heritage beliefs are still as important to the living Kaurna people today.
May I begin by congratulating the ANU, and the books co-editors, for choosing Adelaide as the site of this years book launch. Scholarship is a truly national enterprise, and while our international relations scholars may be concentrated in Canberra and on the east coast, their work has national applicability and interest. For this reason, I am very pleased to welcome you to Adelaide this evening.
I would also like to congratulate the ANUs Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) more broadly for your continued contribution to Chinese Studies as an international leader in the field. As the world seeks to understand China and its rise, it serves Australia well to have the CIWs world-class expertise and capacity, and this is exactly what former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had in mind when he established the Centre in 2010.
Given the substantial contribution that the University of Adelaide also makes to the nations intellectual life, it is appropriate that tonights academic and scholarly collaboration is taking place here. I am proud to be both a graduate and a recent awardee of an honorary doctorate of this excellent institution.
Scholarship and academic investigation are critical components of sound public policy. Public policy must be grounded in reliable data collection, the disciplined assembly of facts, and critical analysis that is not swayed by prejudice, fear or favour.
Similarly, academic freedom is not a mantra that members of the academic community use to protect themselves from scrutiny, challenge or dissent. Nor is it a barricade for avoiding the accountability to which real scholarship should always be subject. Rather, academic freedom guarantees the honesty and integrity of a central component of the nations intellectual life, and is critical to the robustness and relevance of public policy making. This is especially the case in circumstances where there is a vigorous contest between hopes, wants, needs, expectations, entitlements and special interests. Accuracy and truth is the ultimate defence against those who might want to avoid scrutiny of any kind.
It is in this tradition that the Australian Centre on China in the World, the co-editors and the individual chapter authors of The China Story Yearbook 2016 have approached their task. And it is important that they did so, because if we are to understand the emergent power that China is and the great power it is destined to become, we need to understand it as it is, not as we would wish it to be, nor as others might wish us to see it.
While we know that Chinas relationship with the world has undergone a massive transformation during the past few decades, there is much about that transformation that we are still seeking to understand.
China has made an unquestionable contribution to global economic growth, and the economic reforms it has undertaken have lifted upwards of 700 million people out of poverty, a great achievement for China and for humanity. However, about 10% of Chinas present population still live on less than $3.10 USD per day and there are looming challenges of economic uncertainty, overcapacity, and an aging population.
As China transitions from an export-led growth model, to one increasingly focused on domestic consumption, its leaders face extraordinary challenges in seeking to meet the growing demands of their middle class.
And while we know that Chinas view of itself and its place in the world is changing rapidly, we dont yet know how it might seek to influence the international system, or how its pursuit of a more ambitious foreign policy agenda will play out globally.
China is now an economic powerhouse, and is steadily becoming a strategic powerhouse. How it exercises that power matters to all of us, and how we respond to it increasingly depends on our ability to understand China, its motives, and its mindsets.
It is in Chinas interests that it is a constructive and engaged contributor to global prosperity and security, and it is certainly in the interests of the global community at large. For that reason, Australia is invested in working with China in both the bilateral interest and in the broader interests of the global community.
Story-telling is at the centre of how we understand societies and communities. In all civilisations, the dominant groups like to shape the narrative to their own ends and purposes, using stories to legitimate their dominance. However, storytelling is also a means of translating staggering statistics into the reality of human lives across regions, classes, and races.
So in this volume of The China Story Yearbook, we have a group of story tellers academics and experts who have come together to offer their own interpretations of the contemporary workings of Chinas government and its governing institutions, as well as the ambitious and aspirational communities that comprises modern China.
Consistent with past practice, the co-editors have chosen a Chinese character to provide the thread that connects the various stories together. This years keyword is zhi, which means control. But as the co-editors note, zhi has a number of associated meanings, all of which provide both depth and context to the core theme. Zhi can mean control, but it can also mean manage, govern, supervise, or take care of; to harness; and to arrange or put in order. It can also mean to punish, to cure (an illness), to exterminate (an agricultural pest or disease, for example), to research, to pacify and settle, and to stabilise. The term is as flexible as it is subtle.
As one proceeds through the various chapters, dealing variously with central planning, environmental management, population and the economy, culture, the internet, corruption, managing Hong Kong, and Chinas national security, one cannot but be impressed with the genuine affection that the authors have for their subject. Their commentary manoeuvres between amusement and regret, admiration and embarrassment, poignancy and exasperation. But there is always an underlying fascination and empathy with their subject.
This years volume, in my reading of the text, is deeply sympathetic towards China. But it is neither romantic nor sentimental. If anything, it is unswervingly focused and clear-eyed in talking about China as the various authors see it. It is not propaganda. Nor is it an exercise in criticism for its own sake. Its constant purpose is to identify and explain, and it rightly holds China up to the scrutiny that scholars, analysts and commentators give to the US and its administration, to Britain and its current leadership, to the political machinations within France and Germany, and even to the quixotic actions of Australias political leadership.
For example, Jane Golley offers a mischievous glimpse into the tension between environmental amelioration and control when she writes: Given an increasingly environmentally aware public, whose growing demand for greener living is reflected in ever-increasing numbers of environmental protests across the country, the preservation of Party power is at stake, and thats the most powerful incentive of all.
It goes without saying that book launches are events that recognise effort and contribution, and the application of deep knowledge and research to understanding the meaning and significance of things. Book launches are not about endorsement. And in this particular case, the depth of subject-matter expertise and the range of issues covered go far beyond my personal expertise as one who is interested in, impressed by and occasionally overawed by what China has managed to achieve, particularly in the past three decades.
Most of us, like the authors of this years China Story Yearbook, would agree there are things about China that often intrigue and sometimes confound. As China grapples with domestic challenges, on a scale we struggle to fathom, and as its place in the world changes, it is increasingly imperative that we better understand what drives China, its people and its leadership.
And it is here that the ANUs Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) has done us all a great service. By bringing together a panel of experts to offer an unvarnished but sympathetic understanding of what control means in contemporary China, they have exposed us to a set of insights that impact directly on the quality of our understanding of China. As I said earlier, analysis and criticism are essential if we are to develop sound public policy.
So it gives me great pleasure to launch The China Story Yearbook 2016.