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| Obviously not my hand! Sample of 10 B.C. awesomeness. |
And of course, there's been a lot of eating as well as cooking! Most recently, this was with my mum and sister during a trip to Cabramatta (basically Little Vietnam/Asia in the Western suburbs of Sydney) for groceries and a general poke around. My sister, Fran, has a lot of Asian workmates, as well as actually working at Westmead (yes, she's a Westie! But we still love her, haha^^), so she got some good directions and we found the main shopping area and best grocery stores without too much fuss. They also gave her some good recommendations - two separate ones for the same place actually - so we joined the queue outside the Tan Viet Noodle House with a good sense of anticipation. Lucky for us, we got there a bit before midday, but there was still a good 10 or 15 minutes to go while we waited for a spot inside the busy hall of slurping people. The Tan Viet's speciality is crispy skin chicken, so Fran and I got that, while mum got BBQ pork with Singapore noodles. Fran went for rice noodles and I decided to try 'drop noodles' which turned out to be made of tapioca, and we each had a Fruit Cup drink thingie, which was a variety of different fruit popular in South-East Asia like jackfruit, lychee, coconut flesh and a few others, and bright green strands of some sort of agar-agar jelly thing in the bottom, covered in coconut milk, shaved ice and fruit juice (I think). Of course, it was all delicious! We had a spot by the window, which was good in terms of space, but not so much in terms of privacy, as it meant we had the increasingly long line of hungry people staring grimly in at us and mentally urging us to hurry up and finish eating. Somewhat off-putting. If you haven't been, you should definitely Google it and plan to get there relatively early. We paid $45 for the three of us, which is pretty good for anywhere, but especially for Sydney, and you pay at your table after the meal, so you don't have to fight through the people and get in the way of the waiters before you leave.Haha, not doing very well at pretending this isn't a food blog am I? But really, it's not - it's just this post is pretty foody. But then, so am I^^ So onto the serious stuff - an article I read on Facebook. K Rudd's not the man he once was, but that's a soapbox lecture for someone else who likes that kind of thing and isn't me, and he still makes some damn good points. Long-winded, but properly pointy, haha^^
By the way, ex-ANU alumni, just out of curiousity, did anyone ever actually manage to see the ANU's copy of Kevin's thesis? During my Honours year (2008) it was most definitely not in the Menzie's library with the others and I heard it was in Harriet Wilson's office under her watchful eye, but never saw it on any of her shelves. Perhaps it's in a secret safe? Or maybe not so now. Anyway, if you are one of the Indiana Jones-like adventurers who knows what happened to it, please let us Curious Georges know before it turns into FAS mythical lore :) Anyway, read on! This is the original and Kevin's website for those interested.
Monday, 16 April 2012
Speech: BUILDING AN ASIA-LITERATE AUSTRALIA
BUILDING AN ASIA-LITERATE AUSTRALIA
Launch of the paper “Finding a Place on the Asian Stage”
by Carillo Gantner and Allison Carol
ASIALINK, University of Melbourne
16 APRIL 2012
I was delighted to accept the invitation to launch this platform paper entitled “Finding a place on the Asian Stage”.
I
have spent most of my professional life, in one capacity or another,
engaged on the core question of Australia’s engagement with Asia.
I
began studying Chinese 35 years ago at the Australian National
University reinforced by further study in Taipei, Hong Kong and Beijing.
I
worked as a diplomat in Beijing where it was my delight to have
encountered one of the co-author’s of this paper, Carrillo Gantner, who
was then our cultural councillor during the earliest days of our
engagement with the People’s Republic.
In
my years in the Queensland State Government, I worked on our sister
relationship with Shanghai – remarkably in those days, deemed the ‘ugly
duckling’ of China’s economic reform program Because it was then
believed that Shanghai was not keeping up with the reforms of the rest
of the country.
I
also worked extensively on Queensland Government policies underpinning
the teaching of Asian languages in QLD schools and based on that
experience, was asked to deliver for the Council of Australian
Governments a report on a National Asian Languages Studies Strategy for
Australian Schools (NALSAS), which underpinned Federal and State
Government investment in these programs between 1995 and 2002.
After
my election to the Federal Parliament, I broadened my Asian odyssey
beyond China and as a member of Parliament and later as Shadow Minister
for Foreign Affairs and Leader of the Opposition, made it my business to
spend more time in the other countries of the region, most particularly
Japan and Indonesia.
Both
as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Australia’s future in Asia
remained one of my core policy preoccupations – hence my advocacy of an
Asia-Pacific community which finally achieved fruition in 2011 with the
expansion of the East Asian Summit to include both the United States and
Russia.
This
created, for the first time, a regional institution with all the
principal players around the table and with a mandate to address the
future political, economic and security challenges of this, the most
dynamic region in the world.
Over
the years I have lived and travelled more in Asia than in any other
region in the world, as for me it has always represented a core part of
Australia’s long term future.
Asia has also been for us a family affair.
My
daughter Jessica’s husband Albert is a Chinese Australian whose parents
came to Australia in the 1980s via Hong Kong and Guangdong, where they
grew up during the Cultural Revolution. And next month we’re expecting
our first grandchild and I’m looking forward very much to the family
discussions over the little one’s English and Chinese names.
Over
the last weekend, our oldest son Nicholas married the love of his life
Zara who he met at law school having come to Australia from Brunei.
And
to complete the trifecta, our youngest son Marcus is undertaking his
gap year at Peking University studying Chinese full time (and hopefully
acquiring a Confucian work ethic on the way through).
The
reason I say these things is that I have thought long and hard, written
much, and perhaps spoken too much, on this central challenge for
Australia’s future: how do we as a country of barely 23 million, many of
us relatively recently arrived Europeans, carve out our future in this
vast region which Europeans have called “Asia”- a region that is home to
some of the most ancient continuing civilisations on earth, some of the
oldest continuing religions and philosophical systems in the world, and
now the global geo-strategic and geo-economic centre of gravity for the
21st Century.
Australia has been episodically engaged in this critical national project since the days of Chifley and Evatt in the 1940s.
Chifley
and Evatt, despite still being “sons of empire”, actually “got it” in
terms of Australia’s alternative destiny in the Asian hemisphere.
Against
the assumptions of the time, it is remarkable that Evatt championed
Indonesian independence against the Dutch (like the British, a fellow
colonial power in Asia) and did everything he could to help the
foundation of the Indonesian nation state.
After
Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic in October 1949, the cabinet
papers tell us that Chifley and Evatt were both well advanced in their
preparations to recognise the new Chinese Government – except Menzies
won in December, the “red peril” overtook all regional strategic logic
and we lost 23 years in our engagement with the country destined to
become the new superpower of the 21st Century.
In the decades since then, we’ve seen great progress under Whitlam, Hawke and Keating.
That
policy of engagement continued into the Government I was privileged to
lead as Prime Minister and until recently served in as Foreign Minister.
But the truth is there is much more to be done if we are to secure our future in this century of the Asia-Pacific.
Strategically,
we have made considerable advances. Our engagement with regional
institutions such as ASEAN, the ASEAN regional forum, APEC and now the
expanded East Asian Summit have begun to construct a regional
architecture in Asia which is better placed to help us avoid the
calamities that we saw in Europe seen in centuries past.
In these many initiatives, Australia has prosecuted an activist diplomacy.
Australia
was ASEAN’s first external dialogue partner. Australian diplomacy was
at the forefront in the establishment of the ARF.
This
was the same with APEC. We were also a foundation member of the EAS and
Australian diplomacy has driven the expansion of the EAS to effectively
form an Asia Pacific community by another name.
Still,
many strategic tensions remain. We are all familiar with the unresolved
territorial disputes that stretch from Japan’s northern territories
through the East China Sea, the Taiwan Straits, the South China Sea, the
Thai-Cambodian border, the Sino-Indian border as well as the decades
long disputes over Kashmir.
And
on top of these, there are the new generation security challenges
involving human trafficking, people smuggling, other forms of
international organised crime, terrorism as well as cyber security.
The
challenges are vast, although we should not be mean-spirited in
recognising the progress that has occurred, reflecting the fact that it
is now 30 years since the region has seen any significant interstate
conflict.
Economically, the regional story, and Australia’s participation in that story, is even better known.
Over
the decades ahead, Asia will host five of the largest economies in the
world in China, India, Japan, Indonesia and possibly Korea.
Australia is currently Asia’s fourth largest economy, after China, Japan and India.
Eight of our 10 top trading partners lie in Asia.
Asia is now challenging Europe and the United States as a growing source of international inbound investment.
Australia’s overall national economic wellbeing is now overwhelmingly tied to the nations and economies to our north.
A
further positive dimension in Australia’s engagement with our region
has come about through our immigration policy and a long tradition,
largely bipartisan, (although sometimes only honoured in the breach)
which is literally changing the face of modern day Australia.
We
are rightly proud of the fact that our country’s political institutions
and intellectual culture are derived from Western civilisation.
Our
traditions of the rule of law administered by an independent judiciary,
of liberal democracy and of a market economy all derived from this
civilizational tradition.
In
fact, it has been the existence of these institutions, combined with
our relative economic success, and our openness as a society, which has
caused many to come to these shores over the decades to make Australia
their home.
Australia
has been greatly enriched by this multiculturalism - our economy, our
people to people links and the continued creativity which comes from
settler societies which comfortably accommodate new waves of immigration
into our increasingly dynamic cultural melting pot.
One
of the areas where more work needs to be done lies in our national
understanding of the languages, cultures and the arts of the high
civilisations of our wider region which we blissfully describe as
“Asia”.
The
beginning of wisdom lies in understanding the minds of others. How
reality is viewed. How ideas are formed from deep philosophical systems
that bare little relationship to our own. Our
beliefs are derived from ancient religious traditions, the vast
majority of which pre date western Christianity. And how all of the
above influenced, different literatures, historiographies, art forms –
not to mention the media.
It
is in this area that we, as an outpost of the Occidental world, need to
do more work in understanding the minds (plural, not just the mind,
singular) of Asia.
Some
will ask why is this important. Surely English is now the universal
language. Surely the elites of Asia are all studying English. Surely the
bulk of these elites are being educated in western academic
institutions.
At best this reflects only part of the picture and, I would submit, a declining part of the picture. The
truth is, the bulk of the intellectual discourse, political and policy
debate as well as economic exchange within Asia occurs in languages
other than English.
The
truism remains true; Chinese has for a long time been the largest
internet language in the world. There are some 300 million users of the
Chinese equivalent of Twitter today- through the Chinese Weibo.
This is also now the cultural and linguistic medium of much of the Chinese Diaspora.
Furthermore,
there are the cultural assumptions that lie behind English as spoken by
non-native speakers in Asia as opposed to English is spoken in the
Anglo-Saxon world of the US, the UK or Australia. It is just plain wrong
to assume that this will necessarily be the case. The truth is, a lot
is simply lost in translation.
But to return to the question that I’ve already proposed- does this really matter?
It
matters in the sense that there is a grave danger that individuals,
corporations and nations simply talk past each other; thinking that they
are talking about the same concept, when in fact that may only be
partly the case.
Witness
for example the extraordinary national and international debate that
has occurred around the Chinese expression “Taoguang Yanghui”. This has
been long translated in the West “hide your strength, bide your time” as
the best explanation for Deng Xiaoping’s maxim for how China should
implement its modernisation program without causing the rest of the
world to take fright.
The
Chinese interpretation of these four characters is much more benign
than that which is rendered by the English translation- a translation
which infers that the Chinese are craftily building up their own
strength, but will not fully deploy it until they are well and truly
ready, and in the meantime either underplay or simply obscure the
national wealth and power they have already obtained.
If ever there has literally been a debate that has been “lost in translation” it’s this one.
So
much so that China’s leading policy official Dai Bingguo dedicated the
better part of an entire article in Foreign Affairs magazine on what
Deng really meant and what China really means by this vexed expression
“Taoguang Yanghui”.
If
this is where we’ve got to on such a critical strategic concept
involving intense inter-state dialogue between international elites with
squadrons of simultaneous interpreters and translators at the ready,
then pity the rest of us.
How
much is literally being “lost in translation” in straightforward
transactions between individuals, corporations and governments, not to
mention the media, everyday around China, Asia and the world.
The capacity for misunderstandings and missed opportunities are profound.
There
is a further factor as well. It is simply a mark of respect to take
seriously the languages, cultures and deep civilisational traditions of
your principal interlocutors.
It is part and parcel of decent human behaviour.
It should also be part and parcel for decent international behaviour.
We
seem to be taking a very long time to reach the conclusion that
sometime in the next decade, for the first time in 200 years, a non
western, non English speaking, non democracy will become the largest
economy in the world.
In fact it will be the first time in 500 years that a non Western country has achieved that status.
Finally
there is the personal dimension to it all. It is infinitely easier to
build a personal relationship with someone from another culture if you
are able to speak their language.
This
builds on the question of respect that I have just referred to. Common
language enables a greater intimacy in relationships- relationships that
may well help in building broader economic and political relationships
into the future.
This
does not mean that by speaking the same languages as the rest of the
region that Australians would instantaneously achieve agreement with
their Asian neighbours on all aspects of their relationship.
In
fact in certain cases, common language may assist in understanding
where real differences (as opposed to artificial differences) may lie,
and how to most effectively deal with those differences.
There
are, therefore, a number of linguistic, cultural and civilisational
assumptions about how we in Australia and we in the broader west do
business in the future that are going to come under increasing
challenge.
As
Prime Minister and as Foreign Minister, I often argued that the best
vision for Australia was for us to become the most China-literate and
Asia-literate country in the 21st century – the China Century, the Asian Century.
But
are we producing enough Australians with the linguistic and cultural
skills (including in terms of this paper, the performing arts) to
substantiate this claim? The truth is that we are not.
The
most recently available statistics suggest that in fact over the last
decade we have headed in the reverse direction. If we look at the number
of primary and secondary schools teaching the 4 principal languages of
Asia, the figures are concerning.
Research by the Asia Education Foundation shows that between the year 2000 and 2008 there was:
- A reduction from 569 schools teaching Chinese to 380 or so;
- From 2276 schools teaching Japanese in 2000, down to 1921 in 2008;
- In the case of Indonesian language 1795 schools to 1077 schools; and
- In the teaching of Korean, we have actually gone up (but don’t hold your breath) from 42 schools in 2000 to 46 schools in 2008.
If we then go to the number of students learning the four principal languages, the picture is also concerning.
- In Japanese, the number of students has gone down from 419 488 to 351 579;
- In Indonesian, the number of students has gone down from 265 366 to 191 316;
- In Korean, the number of students has actually gone down from 3672 to 3190; and
- In Chinese, while the number of schools teaching Chinese has gone down, there has nonetheless been a modest increase in the number of students studying Chinese from 78 765 to 92 931.
As
data becomes available, we will have to look at what changes have
occurred between 2008 and today. I suspect there will be continuing
problems, but the figures should help to focus our minds.
Then
there is the question of whether our state education systems have
appropriately linked feeder primary schools with high schools
specialising in the same languages that kids have done earlier on.
There
is the further question of the inter-linkages between year 12 level
attainments by students in these principal Asian languages, and what
then is on offer at university level.
Another question arises in terms of the quality of our language graduates in our schools and post-secondary school systems.
This
in turn raises parallel questions about the level of fluency of Asian
language teachers in Australia and whether we are making the best use of
native speakers who may not be fully qualified as general teachers.
Then
there is the real question of the adequacy of curriculum and the
fairness of assessment systems both at the high school and university
levels when it comes to comparing native and non-native speakers,
including the proper classification of non-native speakers who may only
have partial fluency. Many Australian students, their teachers and their
parents are often discouraged by the ability of their children to get a
decent grading in an Asian language taken to year 12 level,
particularly when these gradings may count to university entry.
Another
question arising in the university sector is whether the specialist
study of Asia (including the relevance of Asia to other university
disciplines on offer) is being appropriately supported. This goes to the
question of specialist skills in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and
Indonesian language, literature and history. But equally critical, the
role of these countries in mainstream university disciplines in
economics, law, political science, and business.
My
friends in the University sector tell me are now confronting something
of a crisis across the nation’s universities in the study of Asia –
running in precisely the reverse direction to what Australian will
actually require for our future.
There
is also a much deeper crisis in the lack of Australian student interest
in studying in the principal academic institutions of Asia.
We
may have hundreds of thousands of Asian students studying in Australia.
But the truth is we barely have even hundreds of students studying in
the elite tertiary intuitions of our region.
This
is limiting significantly Australia’s future, not least because the
political, business and social networks created out of the major
universities of Asia will have a very limited Australian alumni.
Of
course all these are questions which are raised on the supply side. The
refrain is often heard; “what about the demand side?” and whether
businesses and governments are appropriately emphasising the employment
of graduates with Asia-specific cultural and linguistic expertise?
Once
again the answer is apparently no. Yet peak industry bodies are
apparently regularly telling universities that they (the universities)
are not producing enough such graduates for the future needs of
industry.
This
in turns creates confusion for both students and parents who fear that
even if their children slog away at school and university on one of the
more difficult languages of Asia, that this will not necessarily equip
them for a decent career.
The
fact is something is not quite working out there between the supply and
the demand side of Asian language and Asian studies graduates. And we
need to get to the bottom of why that is the case.
It is for these reasons that I propose to speak on these questions at some greater length throughout the course of this year.
In
doing so, I hope to be able to promote an intelligent national
discussion on what we should then do to lift our national game.
And
in that sense, I’m not remotely interested in the traditional “blame
game” of blaming one level of Government or the other; state education
bureaucracies or teachers; academic institutions or the business
community, we all need a clearer handle on what is to be done.
And
all this of course is directly relevant to the future of the arts and
the performing arts as well – as we seek to encourage more Australian
creative artists to study, to work and to tour in Asia rather than
simply the capitals of Europe and North America.
The
paper of course goes to specific institutional and funding models as to
how this might all be achieved for the performing arts. I do not
propose to enter that debate here this evening. Rather, what I have
sought to do is to locate this debate within the broader national
discussion that is necessary on how well prepared Australia really is
for the Asian Century that lies before us.
All
this is relevant in turn to what the Government is currently examining
though its white paper process. For Australia, these are important
challenges.
And
in the case of the languages and cultures of our wider region, it is
critical to understanding difference, understanding the minds of our
interlocutors, and therefore in helping forge common futures for us all –
common futures which are both prosperous and peaceful, and, in the
spirit of this occasion, inspiring, innovative and creative.
