Australia’s Grapple with the Chinese Dragon

Five years into Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s life, a momentous event was taking place nearly nine thousand kilometres north that would reshape relations in the APAC region to this date and set the stage for the biggest political fight of his future career. Labor’s Gough Whitlam had just touched down in the People’s Republic of China, becoming the first Australian political leader to do so on a formal visit, one year after the two nations formally established diplomatic ties in 1972. In that year, he ended 23 years of Liberal-coalition rule in Canberra and in doing so, thawed…