Australia releases the Asian Century White Paper

Announcing that Asia’s rise is“unstoppable”, Australia brought out a challenging plan aimed at fortifying its links with India and other booming economies of the Asian region. The Australian plan includes teaching languages like Hindi and Mandarin in its schools. All Australian schools will engage with at least one school in Asia to support the teaching of a priority Asian language — Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian or Japanese. Australia also released ‘Asian Century White Paper’ with an aim to extend and strengthen it links with Asia.

Key to ‘Asian Century White Paper’

The Asia Century white paper is based on two fundamental propositions. First, by 2025 Asia will have transformed itself from the world's low-cost manufacturer into its biggest middle-class consumer. Second, Australia's future prosperity depends on being able to give increasingly sophisticated Asian consumers what they want.

What is the aim of ‘Asian Century White Paper’?

Australia intends to take advantage of a booming Asian region. The Australian Government commissioned a White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century on September 28, 2012. It released this white paper to consider the likely economic and strategic changes in the region and what more can be done to position Australia for the Asian Century. The white paper lays a strategic framework to guide Australia’s navigation of the Asian Century. It includes:

Current and likely future course of economic, political and strategic change in Asia, including China, India, the key ASEAN countries as well as Japan and South Korea.

Domestic economic and social opportunities and challenges of the Asian Century for Australia, including in the economy, science and technology collaboration, clean energy, education, business-to-business and people-to-people links and culture;

Political and strategic implications of the Asian Century for Australia

Role of effective economic and political regional and global cooperation.

Actions that will be taken over the next 5 years and further policy initiatives to be developed over the next 10 to 15 years.