【澳大利亚人报】Lu Kewen keeps China-watchers guessing

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Lu Kewen keeps China-watchers guessing
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25543148-7583,00.html

Rowan Callick May 27, 2009

AS his stellar ratings are slowly settling at sub-superman levels, Kevin Rudd's skills are coming under scrutiny and strain as never before.

But in one area increasingly crucial to Australia, he remains clearly supreme: he is a genuine China hand.

As the countries become enmeshed, issues are emerging, controversies are multiplying. That's a sign of greater closeness, but also a challenge, crying out for sound management and clear communications. I participated in a meeting about Australia-China relations at the Australian National University last Thursday that attracted several hundred students. Business groups are hosting such discussions across the country.

This wouldn't happen if the relationship wasn't seizing imaginations as well as interests. No one's holding such intense talkfests about Australia-Brazil or Australia-Europe relations.

The views at these gatherings on China range wildly. But one consensus is emerging: people want to hear how Lu Kewen, as Kevin Rudd is known in the Chinese world, envisages the relationship in big-picture terms.

People are also scratching their heads in China. And it's not as if Rudd is usually lost for words, except about the red billions in the budget.

Zhu Feng, a professor at Beijing University's School of International Studies, one of China's leading strategic analysts, said during his recent busy visit to Australia that his peers think Rudd may be proving more difficult to deal with than "comfortable" John Howard.

The horizon of Howard's engagement with China may have been limited, but it was consistent. It focused on commercial arrangements, and through a decade, it hardly varied. Beijing appreciates such predictability.

Zhu said: "When Rudd was elected, there was an expectation that a more intimate relationship between the countries would result, because he knows China so well and speaks Chinese."

But the relationship has remained commercially dominated. Zhu said: "Kevin Rudd's China commitment has hardly finished yet. I actually feel he is very friendly to China, in a heartfelt way. He knows China. But he can't always act as he might like. He has to balance issues."

What is Rudd trying to balance? How uncomfortable is that stance, for him as for the rest of us in Australia?

This year, Chinalco's $26 billion bid for 18 per cent of Rio Tinto has deeply divided the business world and the broader Australian community.

Australia has become the prime initial target for China's zou chu qu (go global) campaign by its newly commissioned corporate champions.

The initial conjecture of some in the Rudd camp that the new China-savvy prime minister might bridge the gap between Beijing and the West, especially Washington, has been overtaken by events, despite Rudd's rational zeal in pressing China's case for a bigger role in multilateral institutions.

For Australia has itself become a prime destination, not a mere bridge. The Rio purchase would be China's biggest ever foreign investment, by far.

The business world is presuming that the ultimate call on the Chinalco deal is Rudd's, just as security experts believed it was on the defence white paper.

Will the tensions in the relationship evaporate once a Chinalco decision is made: presumably to accept the desired deal, but hedged with conditions? Just as the defence controversies appear to be fading following the white paper's publication.

The odds are, they won't. Such is the level of engagement, new issues will keep surfacing. And now that the Opposition has started to get stuck in to China issues - at the cost of the bipartisanship that helped make the relationship more comfortable for Beijing - the case is growing for Rudd to give us his comprehensive take on where it should all be heading.

Some people in the business world believe governments should butt out and let deals be done on purely commercial grounds, if such exist. Others - including most of those with extensive Chinese experience - want Canberra to engage with Beijing to ensure such deals are win-win.

Those on both sides are peeved with Rudd. What is it with him and China, ask the Rudd-watchers, reduced to studying photos of visitors to the Lodge for clues, as China-watchers scanned guest lists at the Great Hall of the People decades ago.

Some say he is the Manchurian candidate, the emissary who has remained in thrall to the country to which he once was sent. Apart from his strategy of restricting his briefings about China relations to the Chinese media, this never made sense, even less so as the defence and investment controversies have developed.

Perhaps, though, out of poll-driven concern not to be viewed thus, he is overreacting the other way.

Another view is that he has backed away, disappointed not to be more intimately engaged by China's leaders.

As he left China on his first visit as Prime Minister, he was instead given a ticking-off about Tibet by President Hu Jintao.

Yet another is that he is deliberately concealing his hand, in an Asian manner, leaving everyone guessing until he discerns the right moment to engage publicly in the debate.

Or that, immersed in China minutiae, he is struggling to focus on the big picture.

The other main theory of the Rudd-watchers - this one is the most convincing - is that his expertise on and liking for China, which extends well beyond speaking the language, does not necessarily propel him into agreement with the country's rulers.

This is reflected in the astute comment of Zhu, that China is struggling to adapt to dealing with such a Zhongguo tong, or China expert, at the top.

President Barack Obama has now chosen a Chinese speaker, Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, as the new US ambassador to China.

China's Global Times warned that Huntsman's strong Chinese cultural background "doesn't mean the US will be any less firm with China on contested and thorny issues".

Maybe actually more so. The same applies to Rudd. Perhaps relations will move on to a more pragmatic level, with mutual expectations more realistic following this awkward transition period.

But only one person really knows. And he, for now, is not telling: Mr Inscrutable.

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