5.
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well as economic enterprise in Hong Kong are weakened, then China will lose a lot of
respect. Moreover if refugees leave Hong Kong in the years before the takeover, and
leave by the hundreds of thousands, Australia is likely to be their main goal. We coped
with the unplanned coming of Vietnamese immigrants, the 'boat people', but that was no
way to run a migration program. There are now very serious tensions in some suburbs
where Vietnamese have settled in large numbers. The arrival of boat people from Hong
Kong on ten times the Vietnamese scale could well create widespread tensions here and
ill-will towards China. ́
www.
If several of these events happen in the next quarter century, our relations with
China will deteriorate unless there are counteracting events moving in the opposite.
direction. I see little likelihood that China and Russia will shake hands, some likelihood
that China will become economically strong, a great likelihood that her regime will
necessarily remain regimented, and some risk that the repossession of Hong Kong will
create tensions. Therefore I will be surprised if, during the next 25 years, our relations
with China are always as relaxed as they are today. But so long as we are not taken
by surprise by temporary disagreements, and so long as we continue to accept that we
are very different societies and cultures, then we can cope with these difficulties. How
sensibly nations cope with disagreements is the real test of their relations, not the
flowery toasts drunk at state banquets.
T
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For a few minutes I wish to examine our own country more closely. This is a
placid period in our history, by some definitions. The seas to our north seem
exceptionally calm, and we do not particularly see the threat of invasion. In the last
hundred years there has been no period of ten years, I believe, in which we have rightly
or wrongly felt so secure. A century ago we feared the Germans and the French and
their designs on the south west Pacific. We temporarily, in the 1880s, feared the
Russians. We feared the Chinese, coming, unarmed, to the gold diggings, and then in
about 1900 we began to fear the Japanese. After the defeat of the Japanese in 1945
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