This book revises the existing account of the first Rudd Government's engagement with China, placing Australian foreign direct investment screening policy at the centre of the story. At the time, the Rudd Government was accused of holding an unnecessarily interventionist approach to Chinese Sovereign-Owned Enterprise investments into the Australian mining sector. This book claims that the Australian Government had a deep and coherent understanding of the problem posed by Chinese investments that went well-beyond any simplistic 'China Inc.' or geopolitical threats. The key policymakers believed that the Chinese state-directed investments threatened the integrity of the liberal governance structures on which the Australian state is founded, and so Australian sovereignty itself. While the response of the Rudd Government was largely ineffectual, the logic underpinning it remains the best framework for guiding Australia's engagement with China into the 2020s, as well as the engagementof other liberal states coming to grips with China's rise.

Revises the existing narrative of Australia's engagement with China Argues that under Prime Minister Rudd, the Australian Government acted decisively and soberly to respond to the rise of China, and understood this problem in a deep and nuanced way Appeals to the Australian foreign policy community, students, international policymakers working on responses of liberal states to the rise of China and heterodox policy studies scholars

Autorentext
Michael Peters studied International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He teaches International Relations and works on the editorial and publicity teams of the Economic and Labour Relations Review.

Inhalt
Chapter One: Introduction.- Chapter Two: Governmental Policy Analysis.- Chapter Three: The Policy Departure.- Chapter Four: The Policy Problemetisation.- Chapter Five: Official Discourses of Economics.- Chapter Six: Official Discourses of Security.- Chapter Seven: A governmental account of the policy.- Chapter Eight: Evaluating the Policy.- Chapter Nine: Conclusion.