Rudd announces new Australian National University China centre
By Rowan Callick From: The Australian April 24, 2010 3:42AM
KEVIN Rudd last night announced the establishment of the Australian Centre on China in the World, costing an initial $53 million.
This will be built at the Australian National University, where he graduated with first-class honours in Chinese language and history.
The Prime Minister said the Government would give this new centre - first revealed in The Australian four months ago - $35m as a foundation grant, and $18m for a new building.
Delivering the 70th George Ernest (Chinese) Morrison Lecture at the ANU, he said that the Government aimed to make the centre "the pre-eminent global institution for the integrated understanding of contemporary China in all its dimensions".
"And for the study of contemporary China's regional and global engagement . . a hub for national and international scholars."
Mr Rudd said that during the controversies last year over Chinalco's failed Rio Tinto bid, the arrest of Stern Hu and Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer's visit, "the boisterous environment of our democracy and the media were on display for all to see".
"We appreciate fully the core interests of the People's Republic of China, in particular with regard to its territorial integrity. But we too have core interests and core values that do not change over time."
The ANU centre would be created in "a new tradition of a new Sinology anchored in the principle of zhengyou" - Chinese for true friend, a relationship he offered on behalf of Australia in his last major speech about China, two years ago at Beijing University.
"We need to be able to speak to (China) in a frank manner," he said.
Mr Rudd spoke substantially about China's historical evolution.
He said it is natural that "a growing China will pursue its own interests globally". It has benefited enormously from the international order of the last 60 years, and is thus increasingly "playing its part within this order".
We are seeing in China, he said, "the rise of a great power alongside the continuing single existing superpower, the United States."
He said that China "must take on a greater leadership role on climate change", and "should do more to support wider international efforts against destabilising regimes and on global security challenges such as Afghanistan and Iran".
The Prime Minister urged "a more sophisticated way of understanding today's China" than either being anti-China or pro-China, "the binary language of the Cold War era".
- Re: A new ANU China Centreposted on 04/26/2010
他不容易。当年他娘寡母带着孤儿,晚上连睡觉的地方都没有,只能睡农场的汽车里。
默多克几年前在悉尼搞了个美国研究中心,说是要增进美国和澳洲人民的感情(因为调查显示过半数澳洲人对美国态度负面)。堪培拉这个中心希望能做到提高中国研究的的salience.
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