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Revealed: Australian PM’s most consequential visit to China

Newly released documents show that Bob Hawke’s trip to Beijing in May 1986 gave him a ringside seat to that nation’s reform process.

One of the great myths propagated by hawkish commentators in Australia’s China debate is that before the coming of Xi Jinping a succession of prime ministers and policymakers trotted off to Beijing to be duped by their hosts, dazzled by the rolling dollar signs of the growing China market.

Bob and Hazel Hawke in China in 1986. 

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James Curran
James CurranInternational affairs expertJames Curran is professor of modern history at Sydney University.

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