Neil and Thomas This is a great article. The Prime Minister's claim that "we have not been here before" is laughable in light of the generations of young Australians who have gone to Asian countries to study, live and work. My generation was the first big wave to do this in the 1970s and so many followed later, with most broadening and maintaining their links to the region. Perhaps it's not too late to send the Prime Minister off to the heartland of Asia as a mature-age student. Warren Reed, Sydney.

How, exactly, will learning an 'Asian' language benefit us in any way, as opposed to learning, say, Dutch or French? If we are to become 'Asia literate' as some sort of economic necessity then which Asian language should we learn? All of them? Do many Japanese people speak chinese? China wants our raw materials whether we speak mandarin or not and will continue to do so. Or should we just learn mandarin so when they eventually become a majority we can take orders from them more smoothly?

Outside the rather self-interested perspectives of Asian Studies faculties, I think it’s clear that Australia IS becoming steadily more engaged with Asia. Trade, the two-way flows of students and tourists, the presence of Asian companies here and Australian companies in Asia, investment flows, migration, sister-state relationships, cultural exchanges and a host of other data point to a steadily broadening and deepening relationship with Asia.

Perhaps it would be helpful to have more Australian students studying Asian languages or culture (I see a stronger case for culture), but really that is only part of a trend that has clearly been heading in one direction for several decades.

Rhian,
Re studying "culture", to what end?
English is the language of business in the 21st century and the only "culture" students need to learn if they want to make money in Asia (and stay out of jail) is the culture of the WTO.
Years ago I was casually acquainted with a guy who did the bulk of his business in Asia, he had an album of happy snaps of his trips abroad,
every single photo was of him, his colleagues and their Japanese,Thai and Korean associates looking very drunk and disheveled sitting around in hotel rooms with their ties undone and their shoes off.
Culture is for tourists, commerce has a language, customs and etiquette of it's own.

Jay of Melbourne

I deal a lot with businesses that operate in Asia and with Asian businesses that operate here, and cultural misunderstandings are one of the most common reasons for business ventures failing to deliver what was hoped. By “culture” I don’t just mean tea ceremonies and barbeques, but things like the different roles of governments, regulations, relationship building (which your mate sounds quite good at), ways of treating staff, how long it takes to get a licence, political systems etc. There is a whole unwritten code of “the way we do things” that is absorbed and obeyed almost unthinkingly by Australian businesses but which is utterly alien to the Chinese or Koreans, and vice versa. Commerce may have elements in common across cultures, but there is more to it than that.

Understanding what makes your client tick is a cardinal rule in business.

Australia does not have to worry about becoming an asian country in our times because it'll be an arab enclave long before. We should learn the language of our nearest neighbour though.
Present laws in Australia are way too discriminatory & unforgiving for us to ever even have a hope in hell to become a workable society. Law is the one major factor in which asian countries will always have it over us. Why, because Laws which are only designed as a source of revenue instead of offering an opportunity to reform are society destroying rather than society building.
Australians need to start thinking & realising that the luck that this country has been running on is no running out. What the country needs desperately is people who think country not me,me,me. Watching australian TV I see no hope of that happening though. I'm actually relieved that I'm getting long in the tooth & won't have to endure too much more of the nonsense that this country has become.

Rhian,
Ah,so.

Rhian,
The main differences I experienced personally is that when a deal is done in Asia Australians call it corruption & when a corrupt deal is done in Australia they call business practice. Australian bureaucracy calls it Government fees.

Well, Neil and Thomas,

It is totally understandable why it would be beneficial to Asian students to learn English as a second language - it's a no-brainer. But do Chinese/Asian students study many other of the world languages? Or, do they rely on interpreters, or simply converse in English?

Certainly, some familiarity with the culture (and a smattering of the language) of any nation or region with which one wishes to do business would show respect and 'interest', and thus hope to generate some positive attitudes. A good place to start, but ultimately I would expect specialist 'professional' assistance to be essential to making any real headway, and that the bulk of such assistance would come from withing the target country or a similar Asian culture - potentially including from withing our own multicultural community. I can't see many non-ethnic-Asian Aussie students rising to such a level of expertise.

Your 'Challenge': >>Asia engagement does not need to be highly dramatised, it just needs to finally be done.<<

You fellows appear to have done quite some study in, and of, China and its youth, language and culture, so I would expect you to have some valuable insights as to how best to develop our national and business relations with this super-power. Hopefully you may also be able to extend these insights to apply to our relations with other Asian nations?

So, why don't you have a go at telling us how best to rise to your challenge?

As a possibility, maybe we could use 'specialist' immigration as a catch-up, to span the existing chasm, educate our politicians, and set the broad educational ball rolling? (Maybe they may even tell us that anything more than a casual educational endeavour would be a waste of our time and resources?)

Saltpetre,
You make far too much sense for these characters to comprehend. Stop confusing them because it encourages them to produce even more academic dribble.

...I think it important not to confuse business with culture, per chance culture is sacrificed for business imperatives in the process.
Unfortunately evidence points to the latter when foreign culture (through Government Multiculturalism policies), pre-empts the need for social harmony.

...Multiculturalism is now prime Government business; An essential and over-weighted business of Government designed to support the propaganda machine in pushing economic growth. Unfortunately it is not working on the ground!

...The suck to Asians and their language “mantra” has nothing of substance to it more than another annoying addition to the unbelievable claptrap, adjunctive to Multiculturalism, as the "New-Age" secular religion under the control of Government "High Priests".

Agreed. This is another pointless load of academic twaddle with scant evidence to back it up.

, all the way back to popular writer Frank Clune's 1939 exhortation of Australians to "wake up" to Asian markets and prominent newspaper editor T.W. Heney's observation in 1919 that "every Australian businessman should carry a map of China in his head".

So, one businessman said something in 1919, what about all the business people who didn't? What about the business leaders who said, in 2007: 'This is the beginning of a boom that will last for nine generations'. Rubbish. It lasted for nine weeks.

For over a century Australians have let themselves and future generations down through myopic, blinkered, and timid attitudes devaluing cross-cultural knowledge and failing to put in the educational hard yards. From a young person's perspective, this is why the evidently beneficial study of Asian languages and societies is still a cultural anomaly rather than an educational assumption, despite us seeing Asia reap untold boons from their acceptance of the value of second-language learning.

Asians learn a second language - English - because English is the language of business plain and simple. We do NOT need to learn Asian languages to sell them our raw products, which they are rapidly starting to own before they leave the ground anyway. The article is myopic, not the Australian population.

The article is myopic, not the Australian population.
Cody,
Believe me it really doesn't give me any satisfaction at all to contradict you on the Australian population bit. The real Australians who are rapidly losing the country to less than benevolent interests are myopic in the extreme. By real I mean the descendents of those who built this Nation, fought for it, died for it, made it prosperous & generally had all the right mentality to make Australia into the great Nation it used to be. It's a typical scenario of spoiling the brats & eventually they waste all the good efforts to give them a better life.
The inheritors take it all for granted hence the zilch appreciation factor. I say it serves them right but the bigger problem is that they're dragging us down the drain with them.

Here we go again;
Articles such as this are built up on a myth and an old Dutch cartographer called Mercator.
Now hear this !
Europe is closer to Asia than Australia, but no one suggests that Europe is part of Asia.
Beijing is closer to Europe than Australia.

I will bet quids that the author went to school with Mercator's projection world map on his school wall.
Whole generations have a faulty image of the world due to Mercator.
Teachers see this myth on their classroom wall every day every year
so it is no wonder that students accept the myth.

While a very few high school students ever even hear about great
circles I guess we will be stuck with the myth that Australia is part of Asia.
Incidentally for your information neither Indonesia, the Phillipines or Papua New Guinea are part of Asia.
Like Australia and New Zealand, they are part of Oceana !