The Impact on Australian Political Economy from Chinese Investment into Australia’s Mining Industry

Xueli Huang and Ian Austin

Chapter 4 in Chinese Investment in Australia, 2011, pp 71-112 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract For much of the 1970s to the beginning of the twenty-first century Australia and China have enjoyed solid diplomatic and economic relations as China focused on its own internal economic reforms. More recently (particularly the past five years, 2006 to 2010) the dynamics of the relationship have taken on a far more complex political nature. China increasingly requires natural resources, of which Australia is a major supplier, for domestic consumption and to feed its massive export-oriented sectors, and as a direct result Australia’s own political economy has increasingly come to see China’s need for resources as essential to its own future national prosperity. Despite the political difficulties that have arisen in the relationship during the recent past, the sheer scale and growth of China’s investments, particularly in the resource sector, make it clear that pure mutual commercial interests are driving contemporary relations. In the first two years of the current Labor government (2007–09), over $40 billion worth of Chinese investment was approved (Hewett, 2009d). This was on the back of a resource investment boom under the John Howard coalition government (1996–2007), which enabled it to deliver ever-increasing budget surpluses throughout its time in office. Even so, while Chinese enterprises have significantly expanded their Australian resource investment, this must be kept in context as British, American, Japanese and South Korean enterprises today continue their historical dominance of Australian natural resource exploitation.

Keywords: Chinese Government; Australian Government; Chinese Enterprise; Chinese Investment; Chinese Bank (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-31415-3_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230314153

DOI: 10.1057/9780230314153_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().