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from Part III - Regional issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2024
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) brought to greater prominence a question that has long vexed Australian foreign policy-makers: could they avoid choosing between the US security alliance and Australia’s complementary economic ties with China? Given the immense political capital invested in the BRI by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, it was perhaps inevitable that Australia – like many other countries – had to declare its position. By so doing, however, Australia was forced to reckon with an issue that pitted its security interests directly against its economic ones. This chapter traces Australia’s evolving position on the BRI from 2016 to 2020, its interrelated justifications for rejecting the BRI, and the political and economic consequences of the decision. We show that debate over the BRI disrupted a longstanding consensus about the centrality of free trade and investment to Australian foreign economic policy. The BRI, we argue, signified a turning away from Australia’s previously enthusiastic support for global free trade to a more qualified security-sensitive approach.
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