By Richard Menhinick*
In an interview in Australian Foreign Affairs, Paul Keating noted that China under Xi Jinping was looking to craft a new form of global governance, rejecting the notion of China as a strategic client of the US. Keating also talked about our need to be clever. He observed that ‘before the Industrial Revolution, China was on the top of the system and had a tributary system of states which bowed and genuflected to them. Let’s hope we’re not going to be bowing and genuflecting.’ He went on to say that ‘self-reliance and self-help should be the keynote of our foreign policy’. In my view, that needs to expand to defence policy as well.
