Academic literature on the topic 'Australia Foreign public opinion, Asian'

AbstractDespite Australia's increasing economic ties with Asia, little is known about how it is perceived by the typical citizen in the region. This paper seeks to contribute to the Australian discussion on ‘Asian engagement’, as well as to a general understanding of the structure of foreign policy beliefs, by examining perceptions of Australia's influence among the mass publics of 14 Asian polities. Despite some anxiety in Australia on national op-ed pages and among political leaders over how the country is perceived, we find that the average person in Asia probably does not have a strong or meaningful opinion about Australia's foreign policy. Using survey data covering the years 2006 through 2008 from the AsiaBarometer project, we find that, on average, far more people view Australia's influence on their country favorably (40.5%) than view it unfavorably (6.1%). A similar percentage (41.5%), however, have neutral views of Australia's influence, and 12% of people in Asian nations express no opinion on the topic. We suggest these high frequencies of neutral perceptions and non-response are evidence of considerable indifference towards Australia. Furthermore, we investigate the correlates of perceptions of Australia's influence and find that in almost all cases citizens’ views about US and Chinese influence on their country are much better predictors of their views of Australia's influence than core values, identity, information, and demographic characteristics. We posit that opinions about Australia, even those that are favorable, may have less to do with perceptions of Australia specifically, and more to do with respondents’ general internationalist sentiment or perceptions of major powers.

Whenever I write an opinion piece in any online media outlet about international students in Australia, I brace myself for the responses that appear in the comments section below the article. Often, a repeated complaint is that international students refuse to engage with local culture and society and hence keep to themselves by hanging out with co-nationals and speaking their native languages. While the general public in Australia does not engage in open conflict with international students over such grievances, they will instead discuss these anonymously online and with each other. Often these grievances have public airing through the media (e.g., Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners episodes “Degrees of Deception,” 2015, and “Cash Cows,” 2019) or for political point scoring by Australian politicians (e.g., Senator Pauline Hanson of the right-wing, nationalist and anti-immigration party One Nation; Kainth, 2018). However, the reception international students receive in terms of the attitudes of the citizenry unsurprisingly does not assist in any way in helping them feel a sense of belonging to their host country Australia. In 2013 I interviewed 47 Asian international students in the Australian city of Melbourne on their self-perceived identities, social networks, and engagements with media and communication technologies, in order to understand how they create a sense of belonging for themselves while overseas (Gomes,2015, 2017). The results revealed that international students create a parallel society with other international students in order to cope with living in a foreign country without the familiarity of family or loved ones who they left behind. While this parallel society allows international students to create a sense of community in Australia, its side effect is a perceived distancing from local society. An International Student Parallel Society International students strongly identify themselves more so as international students than their nationality. A student from India, for instance, explained that while in Australia, he prefers to be identified as an international student rather than by his nationality. Taking this point further, a student from Vietnam explained that while he is proud of his nationality, he prefers not to reveal that he is from Vietnam for fear of any negative assumptions the citizenry make about Vietnamese people. These negative assumptions he felt, would then be translated into ways the citizenry might treat him. At the same time, the Asian international students also revealed that they did not consider ethnicity as significant to them. This was played out interestingly in how they viewed Asian Australians. Here the students felt that they had very little in common with Asians who were born or grew up in Australia. An international student from China explained that Australians of ethnic Chinese descent or ABCs (Australian-born Chinese) as she called them, were more Australian than they were Chinese. Meanwhile an Indian student undertaking postgraduate study vividly explained that he thought Indian-Australians were “not true Indians.” He said that while they may look like him, they were significantly different because he considered Indian-Australians culturally Australian and not culturally Indian. These responses are not surprising. In a separate study where colleagues and I surveyed 6,699 international students in Australia on who made up their friendship circles, we found that less than 1% of international students were friends with Australians who were of the same ethnicity as them (Gomes et al., 2015). International students identifying themselves according to their status as foreigners studying in Australia also provides itself to be a beacon for the development of friendships with other international students. The Asian international students interviewed revealed that their friendship circles were made up of fellow international students who were co-nationals in the first instance, which was followed by international students from the Asian region, and then, to a lesser extent, international students from elsewhere. These friendship circles contribute to the parallel society international students inhabit where they exist, occupy, and mimic Australian communities but do not integrate with them. For instance, international students may adopt and recreate Australian cultural practices that involve their friendship circles (e.g., having backyard barbeque parties) but do not integrate with Australian societies (e.g., the backyard barbeque parties are made up solely of fellow international students). In addition, forming friendships with fellow international students rather than with local communities has practical benefits. For instance, international students revealed that their local peers were unable to advise them on the everyday challenges they faced especially when they first arrive to Australia such as how to open bank accounts and where to find dependable Asian grocery shops. Clearly being friends with international students is important, if not necessary. Conclusion The significance of international student friendships during their study experience is enduring, if not complex. While international students may form a parallel society, they do so in order to feel a sense of belonging in Australia rather than to Australia. Though this is unsurprising, the challenge that emerges affects those international students wanting to stay longer through further study, work, or permanently reside. Not integrating somewhat into Australian society may have consequences for students in terms of their long-term plans (e.g., employment) primarily because they have not tapped into local networks.

In Australian public discourse food multiculturalism has been celebrated as a sign of the country’s openness to migrant cultures. Yet, as we show in this article, this apparent celebration of Australia’s ethnically diverse foodscape has emerged alongside a virulent culinary xenophobia at the level of public discourse. In particular, we identify how fears about Asian immigration are often expressed in a distaste for foreign food in the Australian media and official discourse. First, we demonstrate how an advertising campaign jointly funded by government and Australian industry deployed a xenophobic fear of contamination to encourage consumers to avoid food imports and buy Australian foods instead. We then look at how newspaper and television coverage of food poisoning in restaurants and food courts suggests a link between ethnicity and contamination. This analysis of a range of public attitudes to “foreign” foodstuffs highlights that the mainstream enjoyment of ethnic cuisines is not a panacea for long-standing xenophobic discourses.

Americans' feelings about foreign countries are embedded in foreign policy belief systems and affect policy preferences. The analysis of nine surveys of the US general public conducted between 1978 and 2006 indicates that on average Americans have had rather lukewarm or slightly cool, nearly neutral, feelings toward China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia; warm feelings toward Japan and Australia; and cold feelings toward North Korea and (at least since 2001) toward Pakistan and Afghanistan.Individuals' feelings are affected by certain personal and social characteristics. High levels of formal education tend to make people feel considerably warmer toward most of these countries—especially Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. Education increases information: those who know more about the world generally express warmer feelings. But most important are internationalist attitudes, especially putting a relatively low priority on US domestic threats and concerns, embracing capitalism and world markets, and espousing world antipoverty goals. National security considerations play only a limited part. Policy implications are discussed.

AbstractThis article provides a framework for the comparative study of international systems. By analyzing how international systems are framed, scripted, and performed, it is possible to understand how interstate relations are interpreted in different historical periods and parts of the world. But such an investigation also has general implications—inter alia for a study of the nature of power, the role of emotions in foreign policymaking, and public opinion formation. Case studies are provided by the Sino-centric, the Tokugawa, and the Westphalian systems. As this study shows, the two East Asian systems were in several respects better adapted than the Westphalian to the realities of international politics in the twenty-first century.

This article examines the impact on Australia of population movements in the Asia-Pacific region since 1945, with special reference to the period since 1975 that marked the termination of the restrictive ‘White Australia Policy.’ That policy, which had its origins in racist theories popular at the end of the nineteenth century, isolated Australia from its immediate region and kept it tied to its European and, more specifically, British origins. The impact of population, trade and capital movements in the region has been such as to make Australia ‘part of Asia.’ Nevertheless, public opinion has yet to accept these changes fully, especially when they involve changing the ethnic character of the resident population. It is concluded that the generation which has grown up since 1945 and which is now starting to dominate politics and intellectual life will find it easier to reorient Australia than did the previous generation, despite continuing ambivalence in public attitudes. The presence in Australia of large numbers of permanent residents and citizens of Asian origin is a necessary factor in expediting change.

The aim of this paper was to examine the relationship between changes in the US and China macroeconomic conditions and the excess returns of nine Asian-Pacific public real estate markets (Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan). We found that there are insignificant correlations between macroeconomic conditions in the US and China and the real estate markets’ excess returns. Additionally, whilst the US macroeconomic factors show stronger causal relationships with the real estate markets in the long run, China’s macroeconomic variables have experienced a stronger causal relationship in the short run. Finally, key macroeconomic variables, such as the industrial production output index, long-term interest rates, and economic policy uncertainty, produced fluctuating impulse responses to shocks from the US and China. Overall, we conclude that the US economy continues to have a dominant influence in the Asian-Pacific real estate markets. However, during economic crises and in the short run, the impact of China’s economy grows significantly and outweighs that of the US In the context that a high degree of economic and financial integration has affected the interdependent level of international financial markets, the Asian-Pacific securitized real estate markets’ performances are also impacted by global shocks

<p align="justify">Marriage equality or the equal status of same-sex marriage has undergone a rather tough road in Australia, involving diverging opinions in parties at the state and federal levels and constitutional amendments. It appears that people in power set the agenda on the legalization of same-sex marriage. However, it cannot be denied that social media played an almost decisive role in this process because it enabled the gathering of massive public opinion to pressure the government to make changes. To be specific, social media or social networking sites offered platforms for people concerned to share reports about the progress of foreign countries in legalizing same-sex marriage, to express their opinions and to launch campaigns in support of their beliefs. This essay explores the role that social media played in the legalization of marriage equality movement in Australia from the perspectives of the public sphere theory and the agenda-setting theory.</p>

AbstractBoth general publics and elites have long used labels of left and right as cues for political communication and vote choice in Western democracies. This study examines the utility of these spatial semantics as means of encapsulating major political cleavages in East Asian democracies. Through analysis of public opinion surveys, we investigate the influence of organizational affiliation; views on socio-economic, religious, and ‘new politics’ issues, as well as attitudes toward the political system, as anchors of public understanding of the left–right dimension in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Patterns found in these countries are compared with two ‘Western’ nations in the region, Australia and New Zealand. Results show that citizens’ left–right positions in Japan and the Australasian countries are more clearly structured by well-defined cleavages, such as socio-economic issues and post-materialism, and that parties in these countries compete on the basis of clearer ideological profiles. In contrast, despite high rates of cognition of the left–right scale in South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan, left–right orientations are less firmly anchored in attitudes and policy preferences. These differences in publics’ level of ideological conceptualization are likely related to party system development and democratic experience.

In this article we explore the state of the discipline of comparative Asian politics. In particular we analyze five aspects of research on Asia: whether the empirical scope of research is largely noncomparative; the extent to which that research is empirical rather than theory-generative; whether it pertains to public or foreign policy; if it relies on qualitative rather than quantitative methods; and the gender and geographic concentration of those conducting the research. After coding and analyzing data from 461 articles from eight different journals, we demonstrate that research on comparative Asian politics is more likely to be empirical, qualitative, focused on the country as unit of analysis, and disproportionately written by male academics educated and/or working in North America, Western Europe, or Australia.

This thesis considers the ways in which Australia has been publicly represented in ten Asian societies in the twentieth century. It shows how these representations are at odds with Australian opinion leaders’ assertions about being a multicultural society, with their claims about engagement with Asia, and with their understanding of what is ‘typically’ Australian. It reviews the emergence and development of Asian regionalism in the twentieth century, and considers how Occidentalist strategies have come to be used to exclude and marginalise Australia. A historical survey outlines the origins of representations of Australia in each of the ten Asian countries, detecting the enduring influence both of past perceptions and of the interests of each country’s opinion leaders. Three test cases evaluate these findings in the light of events in the late twentieth century: the first considers the response in the region to the One Nation party, the second compares that with opinion leaders’ reaction to the crisis in East Timor; and the third presents a synthesis of recent Asian Australian fiction and what it reveals about Asian representations of Australia from inside Australian society. The thesis concludes that Australian policies and practices enable opinion leaders in the ten countries to construct representations of Australia in accordance with their own priorities and concerns, and in response to their agendas of Occidentalism, racism, and regionalism.

This chapter examines Australia’s engagement with the international politics of global climate change. It first provides an overview of the problem of global climate change and its likely effects, focusing on key complexities and dilemmas regarding climate change, and the evolution of the climate change regime through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. It then considers key drivers of climate diplomacy, from the ideology and foreign policy perspectives of different governments to the role of public opinion and the ebb and flow of international cooperation. It shows that Australia’s changing approach to climate change cooperation underscores the profound challenges for the climate change regime.

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) are playing an increasingly vital role in the daily lives of all communities by revolutionizing their working procedures and rules of governance. ICTs offer a unique opportunity for governing elite to overcome the crisis of representative democracy, as ICT and the Internet empower civil society to play its role more effectively and facilitate the performance of governments’ main function-serving the people who elect them (Misnikov, 2003). In the realm of government, ICT applications are promising to enhance the delivery of public goods and services to common people not only by improving the process and management of government, but also by redefining the age-old traditional concepts. Community networking groups and local government authorities are well placed to campaign for greater inclusion for all members of the community in the information society. Possible areas to target include the provision of technology at low or no cost to groups through community technology centres or out of hours school access. There are many possibilities and local government must take a significant role in these activities (Young, 2000). Information society is based on the effective use and easy access of information and knowledge, while ICT for development (or ICTD) is not restricted to technology itself but focusing on manifold development and diverse manifestations for the people to improve their well-being. ICTD has deep roots in governance, is part of governance and has effects on governance patters and practices at both central and local level. By recognizing these facts, UNDP focuses on technologies to end poverty at WSIS Cyber Summit 2003, and emphasizes on ways that new technologies can help lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty (UNDP, 2003). Apart from the four Asian IT giants (Korea, Rep., Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, China, and Japan), most of the Asian countries have fallen under the “low access” category of the Digital Access Index. This has also been referred in the WSIS Cyber Summit 2003, until now, limited infrastructure has often been regarded as the main barrier to bridging the digital divide (ITU, 2003). Among the countries with ICT spending as share of their GDP, Sweden, UK, The Netherlands, Denmark, and France (8.63, 7.97, 7.39, 7.19, and 6.57% respectively during 1992-2001) remain at the top (Daveri, 2002, p. 9), while countries like Bangladesh, Greece, Mexico, Niger, and many more remain at the bottom (EC, 2001; ITU, 2003b; Miller, 2001; Piatkowski, 2002). In a similar research it has been found that in terms of average share of ICT spending GDP, New Zealand, Sweden, Australia, USA, and UK (9.3, 8.4, 8.1, 8.1, and 7.8% respectively during 1992-1999) were among the highest (Pohjola, 2002, p. 7), though most of the countries in the Asian and African regions remain below the average of 5%. The disadvantaged communities in the countries staying below average in ICT spending seem to be lagging in forming appropriate information-based economy and eventually fall behind in achieving proper e-government system. The e-government system in those countries need to enhance access to and delivery of government services to benefit people, help strengthen government’s drive toward effective governance and increased transparency, and better management of the country’s social and economic resources for development. The key to e-government is the establishment of a long-term dynamic strategy to fulfill the citizen needs by transforming internal operations. E-government should result in the efficiency and swift delivery and services to citizens, business, government employees and agencies. For citizens and businesses, e-government seems the simplification of procedures and streamlining of different approval processes, while for government employees and agencies, it means the facilitation of cross-agency coordination and collaboration to ensure appropriate and timely decision-making. Thus, e-government demands transformation of government procedures and redefining the process of working with people and activities relating to people. The outcome would be a societal, organizational, and technological change for the government and to its people, with IT as an enabling factor. E-government should concentrate on more efficient delivery of public services, better management of financial, human and public resources and goods at all levels of government, in particular at local level, under conditions of sustainability, participation, interoperability, increased effectiveness and transparency (EU, 2002). ICT brings pertinent sides more closely by prioritizing partnerships between the state, business and civil society. A few East European countries have became economically liberal with the high level of foreign direct investment per capita and at the same time became ICT-advanced regional leaders in terms of economic reform. These countries also present the region’s most vivid examples of partnerships and collaboration. They have clearly manifested the importance of the public-private partnerships, transparent bottom-up strategies, involvement of all stakeholders, total governmental support, capturing economic opportunities, and enabling electronic mediated businesses, responding to the challenges of globalization.