Online exhibition celebrates the 40th anniversary of Australia’s formal recognition of China
The Whitlam Institute within the University of Western Sydney has launched an online exhibition to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the establishment of Diplomatic relations with China.
The Whitlam and China online exhibition provides an opportunity to explore the extraordinary events that led to this dramatic shift in Australian foreign policy.
On 21 December 1972, within just three weeks of the election that brought the Whitlam Government to power, a joint communiqué was signed in the Australian Embassy in Paris, which formalised the exchange of diplomatic recognition between the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
“The recognition of the People’s Republic of China by the Whitlam Government heralded not just a dramatic change of direction in Australian foreign policy but laid the foundations for Australia’s economic future as has become evident,” says Eric Sidoti, Director of the Whitlam Institute.
“Yet it’s worth recalling just hold bold a move it was.”
Recognition in government followed Gough Whitlam’s ground-breaking visit to the People’s Republic of China as Opposition Leader in 1971. Dr Stephen FitzGerald, who was on that trip and subsequently served as Australia’s first ambassador to China, has claimed that “There is nothing in Australian history to compare with that China visit”. expedition as the “most exciting and most exacting” he ever made.
Advocacy for the recognition of China was a consistent theme for Gough Whitlam throughout his parliamentary career, until his Government had the opportunity to enact change in 1972. In 1954 Gough Whitlam had stood before the Parliament and, against Labor Party policy, had argued “...It is about time that, like the United Kingdom and France, we recognised the communist government of China...", a controversial position for the time.
“The establishment of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China was the end of a long journey for Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. It was the culmination of decades of advocacy and persuasion.”
“It marked a profound shift in Australia's attitude toward China - a shift that Whitlam's own bold decision to visit China as Opposition Leader in 1971 had helped bring about,” says Guy Betts, Curator.
This online exhibition is part of the project ‘Gough Whitlam and the road to establishing formal relations with the People's Republic of China: the significance for contemporary Australian-Chinese relations,’ which is supported by the Commonwealth through the Australia-China Council of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and is a part of the program to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and the People’s Republic of China. Images in the exhibition are courtesy of the National Archives of Australia.
Ends
31 January 2013
Photo courtesy of the National Archives of Australia
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