IMPROVING strained relations with China is a matter of mutual education and self-interest.

Beijing's huge investments present the U.S. with a challenge, and an opportunity.

CHINA today is Janus-faced. In the contradiction of the two faces of China sits the present Australian crisis in our relations with the Middle Kingdom. China today is a contradiction in statehood.

SOMEWHERE between the diplomatic lows of the Australia-China relationship and the commercial highs of the $50billion natural gas deal, there was a quiet screening in Parliament House this week of the controversial documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.

THE Rudd government signed off on Australia's next economic stimulus package this week, a deal to sell China $50 billion of liquefied natural gas from the proposed Gorgon project off the West Australian coast.

A PARADOX has befallen China. Its vindication from the global financial crisis is mocked by internal political tensions, frustrations with resource suppliers such as Australia, worry about keeping its economic growth and paranoia over ethnicity and human rights.

The summer of 1985 was a beautiful time in Beijing. Not because of the sweltering heat, or the relentless pollution, or the ubiquitous cigarette smoke, often mixed with garlic, which you inhaled at seemingly every meeting.

THE Rudd government may be in bad odour in Beijing, but its steady management of the quite serious crisis in Canberra-Beijing relations has won discreet but high praise from the Obama administration in Washington.

CHINA has launched a two-track strategy to manage its increasingly strained relationship with Australia, encouraging investment to continue while freezing out Canberra on the official front.