Australia's New Foreign Policy White Paper - A View from Japan

In November 2017, the Australian Government released a new Foreign Policy White Paper, fourteen years since its last. The White Paper was widely reported by the Japanese media, including newspapers and television news outlets. As far as this author knows, it received the most coverage of any Australian foreign and security document—perhaps since the publication of the 2009 Defence White Paper. These reports generally stressed that the new White Paper takes a tough stance against China by ‘checking’ (or kensei in Japanese) its rise. The geographical concept of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ featured by the White Paper was also treated as evidence that Australia is enhancing its anti-China stance with other like-minded democracies in the region.