Outgoing Australian ambassador to the US Arthur Sinodinos recalls how he and his Chinese counterpart broke the ice over a few laughs at a Washington gala.
Washington | On the global stage of diplomacy in Washington, relationships mean everything, no matter how unusual the circumstances under which they are forged.
For Arthur Sinodinos, who was succeeded last month by former prime minister Kevin Rudd as ambassador to the US, rebuilding relationships was key to the job, especially when those with the Chinese and French hit an all-time low.
Ice-breaker. Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat. AP
Over a fractious three years, countless invitations to the ambassadors of China and France were declined, with the former harbouring grievances about Australia’s ban on Huawei and global initiative to probe COVID-19 origins, and the latter livid with Australia’s decision to scrap a $90 billion submarine deal.
But persistence paid off, after meetings in two unusual settings, Sinodinos tells The Australian Financial Review,
With China, it was an engagement with the comic character Borat, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, at Washington’s Kennedy Centre, the performing arts building on the Potomac River named after the father of the present US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy.
Arthur Sinodinos: “A lot of stuff gets done in the margins of events in an informal way.” Sarah Baker
Sinodinos and China’s then-ambassador and current foreign minister Qin Gang were seated arm to arm there for the annual performing arts awards in December, attended by the likes of US President Joe Biden and actor George Clooney.
“Qin Gang had a sense of humour,” Sinodinos says, “but I had to explain to him about Borat.”
Borat, the spoof Kazakhstani cultural attaché, came on stage and deliberately referred to Biden as “President Trump”.
“Borat came out and did his sort of turn. At first [Qin] heard ‘cultural attaché of Kazakhstan’ and he said, ‘is that really?’ and I said, ‘no, no, it’s a joke, it’s Borat’, and he said ‘oh, alright’ and he started to get the joke.”
“Australia had been reaching out to the Chinese – that was part of my job here in DC. We tried a couple of times. I had invited him to the residence, but we could never make dates work, which I think just reflected at the time, some hesitancy. And then by chance to have this opportunity was good just to strike up a personal note.”
The two sat together for a few hours chit-chatting – Qin’s English is good – and there was plenty to discuss, including Qin’s next move within the Chinese Communist Party’s power structure.
“He was very much a straight-down-the-line diplomat, which you’d expect. I think the Americans might have underestimated him. I think they were surprised when he became foreign minister,” Sinodinos says.
Sinodinos might have liked to have gone deeper, explaining how he was “one of those who thought China might grow to be a version of Singapore or Taiwan on steroids, but clearly that did not happen, China took a more authoritarian turn”.
China’s foreign minister and former ambassador to the US Qin Gang. Getty Images
While the two ambassadors got to know each other, the meeting would ultimately prove too little, too late for Sinodinos as both he and Qin were to leave their posts within a few months.
“I sort of tried to get out of him about what he might be doing next, but he said nothing’s been announced yet. Obviously, it wasn’t an investment that was going to yield much further. Kevin Rudd will no doubt try to catch up with his successor,” Sinodinos says.
The next meeting Sinodinos secured was with the French, who had lost out of a $90 billion submarine deal with Australia because of AUKUS.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the AUKUS submarine deal would never deliver and recalled his ambassadors to Australia and the US following the announcement of the deal in September 2021.
Philippe Etienne, the French ambassador, was eventually sent back to Washington and Sinodinos found himself with him at a private dinner with the boss of the Chinese-backed social media platform TikTok, which has since been banned from US and Australian-government employee phones.
“We were invited to a dinner by the CEO at the company’s lawyers premises in DC. And the French ambassador and his wife were there as well,” Sinodinos says, without elaborating on the nature of the meeting and what was discussed.
But that meeting didn’t really afford the two ambassadors time to flesh out AUKUS and the decision by the Australian government to ditch the French submarine deal.
Sinodinos had to find a different way. He used the only grass tennis court in Washington, located at the Australian ambassador’s private residence, as his lure.
Arthur Sinodinos invited the EU Ambassador to the Kangaroo Cup tennis tournament at the Washington residence. Matthew Cranston
He invited the European Union Ambassador Stavros Lambrinidis around to Australia’s annual tennis tournament – known as the Kangaroo Cup – where people don whites and strategise over who has the weak backhand and the killer drop shots.
“We had Stavros Lambrinidis over to the house for the tennis tournament … and Stavros said: “I’m happy to get you and Philippe together because I know it’s been a bit … ”
“I said, ’Yeah, that would be nice to get together. And so then the three of us had lunch at the EU ambassador’s house.”
“Philippe grilled me, in a light to medium way, not a heavy way, about the background, the decision, how it came about. What was it? What was the government thinking? What was the process of doing it, the way it was done – the announcement and all the rest of the staging of it,” Sinodinos recalls.
“He was professional. He’s a good guy. And that was a good opportunity for us to clear the air.”
Sinodinos says having lunch with the French ambassador that day was “all business”. It was important for the French to have that meeting with Sinodinos and vice versa.
France’s legacy and involvement in the Pacific is important, and knowing what the French ambassador to the US has to say about such a strategic geopolitical hotspot is crucial. Etienne was involved in the Biden administration’s Pacific Island Leaders Summit in Washington last year, which brought together 12 Pacific Island nations that are all susceptible to security deals with the Chinese.
Sinodinos could tell that the ambassador had to weigh up whether to leave such matters to the big boys back in Paris or deal directly with the Pacific island nation leaders when they were in town.
“There’s always that sensitivity about to what extent on these matters do you work through the islands themselves in the Pacific as opposed to, in this case, the metropolitan government in France,” Sinodinos says.
“A lot of stuff gets done in the margins of events in an informal way. But that’s how Washington works,” Sinodinos says.