This book revises the existing account of the first Rudd Government's engagement with China
placing Australian foreign direct investment screening policy at the centre of the story. At
the time the Rudd Government was accused of holding an unnecessarily interventionist approach
to Chinese Sovereign-Owned Enterprise investments into the Australian mining sector. This book
claims that the Australian Government had a deep and coherent understanding of the problem
posed by Chinese investments that went well-beyond any simplistic 'China Inc.' or geopolitical
threats. The key policymakers believed that the Chinese state-directed investments threatened
the integrity of the liberal governance structures on which the Australian state is founded
and so Australian sovereignty itself. While the response of the Rudd Government was largely
ineffectual the logic underpinning it remains the best framework for guiding Australia's
engagement with China into the 2020s as well as the engagementof other liberal states coming
to grips with China's rise.
