CANBERRA: A wind of change might just be beginning to blow across the political landscape of the western Pacific and it could have consequences for us all.

And the motor is China’s emerging economic breakout, the dynamism of which, observers believe, could not have been more sharply pointed up than during the recent simultaneous visits to Australia of US President George W. Bush and China President Hu Jintao.

While President Hu announced the biggest single export deal in Australian history for supplies of liquefied natural gas, the expected breakthrough in free trade talks between Canberra and Washington — Australia’s long-term ally — did not materialize. And while, for Australians, US rhetoric about free trade is looking increasingly unconvincing, Hu went much further than a A$30 billion gas project — slated as just the first of many of such magnitude — and presented a vision of prosperity and security for Australians that future American presidents might not be able to match.

With Australian-US relations going off the boil and Canberra’s uneasy sense it was being locked out of moves by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) to negotiate a free trade agreement with China, Hu’s address was perfectly timed.

Analysts are now saying that the President was offering Australia a way to bypass the intransigence of its nearest northern neighbours and achieve massive trade benefits from aligning its interests more closely with those of Beijing.

In a speech just before Hu arrived, the governor of Australia’s central (Reserve) bank, Ian Macfarlane, said regional neighbours competing with China in manufacturing were embracing free trade talks for fear they could be overwhelmed by an economy that has a base of more than 1.2 billion people from which to draw its workers and consumers. Australia was in no such competition, said Mr Macfarlane. What Australia does have is vast and little-developed natural gas reserves that offer China a solution to an energy and environmental crisis caused by the inefficiencies of burning coal.

While China’s chances of replacing the US in Canberra’s affections remain a moot point though, the president of the US- Asean Business Council, Ernest Bower, says he’s never seen a time when the US has been so distracted and China so focused, a focus based on domination through economic rather than military muscle.

And Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s refusal to endorse Washington’s argument that China should allow foreign exchange markets to trade the undervalued Yuan, simply underlined the poor relations between the long-time Western allies.

In his speech to the Australian parliament in Canberra, President Hu suggested that ‘a constructive Australian role in China’s peaceful reunification (with Taiwan) would create optimum trade ties with Beijing’. And there is the rub.

Geoffrey Barker, a leading Australian commentator on foreign affairs, says morality is taking a back seat in the sudden infatuation with China.

Low frequency flights to China, not counting services to Hong Kong, have started to rise sharply, to more than 21 weekly flights now and expectations of more than 10 flights a day by 2007. A wind of change does seem to be gathering strength.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.