News & Media
Living with the dragon

Last Updated:2014-06-28

Dr Geoff Raby, an economist turned diplomat, told the Sydney Morning Herald that friends are hard to make in China.


Business in China, he says, is ‘‘not about the black letter of the law, or the contract you think you have signed. It’s about trust and relationships, and that takes a very, very long time to build’’.


Raby insists that given the ‘‘complementarity’’ of the Australian and Chinese economies ‘‘no country will ever be more important [to Australia] than China’’. And this will be the case ‘‘forever, unless China implodes’’.


Yet he also concedes that it’s ‘‘the most complex country we have to deal with, because no major economy in the world has stood so far apart from the global norms of social and political organisation as China does today’’.


Life in China, he says, requires ‘‘endless networking, and an endless effort into making friends. Not even friends, exactly, but making relationships. Because no one really is your friend."


Please click to read the full Sydney Morning Herald Article.