Australia to get Mandarin speaking prime minister?

陆克文 , 你好!

This piece about Australian opposition leader Kevin Rudd is by Fergus Ryan

The recent APEC summit in Sydney had one success that the host, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, may not have foreseen. Opposition leader, Kevin Rudd (Labor Party), effectively gate-crashed the event and upstaged Howard by addressing Chinese President Hu Jintao in fluent Mandarin. As Howard grimly watched on, Rudd welcomed Hu to Australia and spoke of his time in Beijing as a diplomat in the 1980s and of his family’s personal links to China and Chinese culture, to great diplomatic and popular effect.

The following day, Hu and Rudd sat down for a 30-minute discussion conducted entirely in Mandarin. Clearly impressed by Rudd’s performance, Hu invited him and his family to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and commented “You speak perfect Chinese and you know China inside and out”.

In fact, Rudd’s Mandarin-speaking ability has come a long way since his early days as a diplomat in Beijing. In 1984, when translating then Ambassador Ross Garnaut’s remarks to a Chinese delegation that “Australia and China were enjoying a great closeness in their relationship”, Rudd is reported to have said “Australia and China are enjoying simultaneous orgasms in their relationship”.

Since taking over the leadership of the Labor Party in December 2006, Rudd has consistently led in opinion polls. His standing has been further buoyed by his APEC performance, according to the Australian media, and in recent days has repeatedly challenged Howard to call the election. So far, Howard has held off any announcement, saying on Australian television on Monday night that parliament will continue to sit for the next two weeks, without mentioning an election date.

A fluent Mandarin-speaking Prime Minister may help to strengthen Australia’s reputation in the region. In the past, Asian commentators have criticised Howard’s remarks about Asian immigration, Australia’s role in Southeast Asia as that of the US’s “Deputy Sheriff”, and openness to “pre-emptive strikes ” on terrorist groups in neighbouring countries.

In the event of a Rudd Labor Party victory in the forthcoming, yet-to-be-announced election, at the very least Kevin Rudd has promised to reinstate the National Asian languages in Australian Schools Program, that was abolished by the Howard Government in 2002. It is anticipated that this will be just one element of a new Australian engagement with Asia, that will forge new and positive directions in international relations in the region.

Editors note:

— Jeremy Goldkorn