In this book, Robert Macklin promises to tell the ‘hidden history’ of the ‘story of the relationship between the two countries and the extraordinary effect each has had upon the … development of the other’. The problem with this kind of hyperbole is that if you don’t deliver, you risk losing the reader, even if, on a more modest scale, you have something to offer.

Sadly, there is no hidden history. Macklin evidently believes that the careers of George Morrison and William Donald support his thesis. These men were intrepid Australian journalists who enjoyed some influence at high levels of the Chinese political class in the early 20th century; Morrison advised Sun Yat-sen, and Donald was close to Chiang Kai-shek’s wife, Mei-ling. But while as individuals their careers were impressive (and are in fact well known – see, for example, Hannah Pakula’s The Last Empress) their true impact on events was peripheral.

China is such a big and complex country with such a big and complex history that it is naive to think that a couple of non-Chinese advisers (neither of whom ever learned to speak Chinese) made any real difference.

That said, Macklin provides an accessible survey of Australian–Chinese economic and political engagement, particularly for the period after Gough Whitlam’s daring visit as opposition leader in 1971.

Reviewed by Grant Hansen