Sino-Australian Relations: A Triangular Perspective

Since the 1990s, Australia has become increasingly concerned about a perceived incongruence between its booming economic relationship with China and its security alliance with the US. There have been dire warnings that the future will be marked by an inevitable increase in tensions between China and the US as the former threatens to overtake and surpass the latter in aggregate GDP and in military force projection capability. This combination of bilateral tensions and concomitant pressures from each side for Australia’s support could force Canberra into a difficult choice: renounce its economic relationship with China to side with an economically moribund West, or betray old alliance commitments in pursuit of a lucrative relationship with a rising but ideologically alien new hegemon. What should Australia do? That is not a question that can be answered scientifically, but the framework provided here can perhaps elucidate the stakes.