Professor John Fitzgerald discusses China’s development of a concerted program that specifically targets its diasporas. He highlights that China’s strategy of targeting Chinese Australians, as patriotic Chinese, is not matched by Australian government or community engagement with Chinese Australians as Australians. Australia’s Chinese communities are among its greatest assets for building closer social, cultural, educational and trading ties with China and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Fitzgerald shares his insights on how Australia should shape its public diplomacy in the digital age, and how Australia could meet the public diplomacy challenge of engaging Asian diasporas in bilateral relations.

Professor John Fitzgerald is the Director of the Asia-Pacific Social Investment and Philanthropy Program at Swinburne University of Technology. Before joining Swinburne in 2013, Fitzgerald served five years as Representative of The Ford Foundation in Beijing where he directed the Foundation’s China operations. Before that, he was Head of the School of Social Sciences at La Trobe University and previously directed the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. In Canberra he served as Chair of the Education Committee at the Australian-China Council of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as chair of the Committee for National and International Cooperation of the Australian Research Council, and as International Secretary of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Professor Fitzgerald’s research focuses on territorial government and civil society in China on Australia’s Asian diasporas. His publications have won international recognition, including the Joseph Levenson Prize of the US Association for Asian Studies and the Ernest Scott Prize of the Australian Historical Association.