英文阅读：The man who can influence China
Saturday night Australia elected a new Prime Minister, the Labor Party's50-year-old Kevin Rudd. He replaced the Liberal Conservative 68-year-old John
Howard who governed the nation for 11 years.
Days before the election Howard wrote on YouTube, "The government to be
chosen today will set the direction of the country for years into the
future."
As it stands it is not just Australia that's changing tack with the
election of Rudd but also the wider global geopolitical environment.
Rudd is conversant in Mandarin, and formerly worked at the Australian
embassy in Beijing. He is adept at high-level diplomatic exchanges with China
and has the potential to act as a broker between the west and an emerging,
increasingly powerful, often misunderstood middle kingdom.
Three years earlier the then Australian Labor Party leader Mark Latham
commented,
"No country in the world is better placed than Australia to work to ensure
that the relations between the United States of America and the People's
Republic of China remain fruitful, productive, creative and, above all,
peaceful."
He could very well have been speaking of this day.
At present the United States is experiencing festering anti-China sentiment
in regards to the toy quality debacle in the lead up to Christmas, in addition
to continuing trade imbalances with China and a recent visit by the Dalai
Lama.
Place this alongside growing militarization in Japan where the US still has
bases, continuing American weapons sales to Taiwan, not to mention meandering
nuclear North Korean tensions and the situation seems to cater for a diplomat of
Rudd's caliber.
Choosing the opposite path from his predecessor and refusing to play the
role of Bush's deputy sheriff, Rudd has promised to pull out Australian troops
from Iraq and ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Of note, one of the first calls he
received after the election was from President Bush himself.
Addressing carbon emissions in Australia was incredibly risky and took
guts. Australia's three leading export earners are coal, tourism and iron ore.
According to Dr Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens Party, "Today we have
seen Australia vote for a greener, more compassionate Australian
parliament".
In the lead up to this week's election three past Labor prime ministers,
Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke, swallowed their egos, buried their
long bitter animosities and stood up to show their support for the winds of
change. They recognized the potentialities Rudd brings to Australia and the
wider world.
Forty-six years ago Gough Whitlam smelled it in the air when he became the
first western leader to visit Beijing preempting Kissinger and Nixon.
The next Labor leader a decade later, Bob Hawke was in tune, becoming one
of the founding fathers of the Boao Forum for Asia that takes place each year in
Hainan.
Hawke's replacement, Paul Keating was thrown out by the people and replaced
with Howard, with one of the reasons given that he was too close with Asia.
In many respects Rudd is the prodigal son of the Australian Labor Party and
represents their collective vision of the leader the nation needs for this new
century.
It was a mark of maturity for the Australian electorate to recognize this
too and not step away from the task at hand.
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