China: Australia’s new great and powerful friend?

This article was published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, pp. 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2025.2481057.

Abstract

This provocation argues that Australian policymakers could, perhaps should, look to China rather than the United States as their new ‘great and powerful friend'. Yet at a time when Donald Trump is upending the ‘rules-based international order', which supposedly provided the legitimising rationale for both American and Australian foreign policy, neither of Australia's major political parties is contemplating change, much less criticism of an increasingly unpredictable and transactional ally. Exploring why such things remain impossible to imagine tells us something revealing and important about the dominant ideas that shape Australia’s place in the world.

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