Shanghai, People's Republic of China
It is a pleasure to visit CELAP for the first time today - on my second visit to China as Prime Minister.
Since my last visit in 2011, we have celebrated the important milestone of 40 years of our diplomatic relations.
As Vice Premier Liu Yandong and I discussed in Canberra last December, in the Great Hall of Australia's Parliament House, it was an important time not only to reflect on how far we have come, but to plan for the future.
It is remarkable to think that in the past forty years, bilateral trade has grown one thousand fold. This reflects not only China's great rise but also the greatly complementary nature of our two economies.Today, China is Australia's largest trading partner - and Australia is China's seventh largest trading partner.
Chinese investors prosper in Australia's open and transparent economy and Chinese exporters find open markets and willing customers.
Earlier today we took a significant new step in the relationship when I welcomed a new agreement between our financial authorities.
The Australian and Chinese currencies will be directly traded on the Chinese mainland for the first time.
The Australian dollar will be only the 3rd major currency directly traded in China's mainland foreign exchange market, after the US Dollar and the Japanese Yen.
This reflects the rapid growth of our bilateral trade and the value of two-way investment - and it also creates opportunities for new financial integration.
The important Chinese Government policy objective of greater internationalisation of the Chinese currency will be significantly advanced by these decisions.
Australia's banks, superannuation funds and financial houses will be even better placed to help in the growth of China's service economy.
This is good news for the Chinese economy and good news for the Australian economy.
Our economic ties are greatly enhanced by people to people links.
Chinese nationals made more than 620 000 visits to Australia last year while 380 000 Australian tourists travelled here - many beyond the first-tier and coastal cities.
There are around 120 000 Chinese students in Australia's world-leading education institutions.
The proportion of Australian undergraduates studying some part of their degree overseas has doubled in the past five years - one third in Asia.
Mandarin is the second most commonly spoken language in Australia, second only to English. Cantonese is fifth.
The Chinese Australian community now numbers almost 900 000 strong.
Today, the economic reality of our complementary strengths is the core of what we each gain from our broad, enduring ties.
This will remain strong in coming years - and will only be reinforced by these diverse human and social connections our peoples are forging today.China's rise is the remarkable global fact of the past thirty five years.
Yours is a vast and vibrant society - a modernising nation confident of success.
I see this confidence in the state of the art network of high speed rail interconnecting your biggest cities and pushing out into your fast growing central and western regions.
I saw it in the showcase of Chinese talent that was the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Paralympics and the 2010 Shanghai Expo.
I saw it in the Shenzhou 9 - China's first docking with a manned spaceship in orbit - and the first flight of a Chinese female astronaut.
This is the China which I believe can embrace and manage future change.Today, after decades of export-led and investment-driven expansion, I know China looks ahead to secure a new era of economically balanced, socially and environmentally sustainable growth.
This presents immense challenges - challenges I know your leaders fully recognise.On Sunday I met President Xi Jinping in Bo'ao.
I came away in no doubt that your new leadership is determined to succeed - that China will remain on the reform path.
President Xi has spoken often of the Chinese dream, “the great renewal of the Chinese nation”.
He has also made clear this national dream depends on bringing benefits to the Chinese people themselves.
In his words, so that the Chinese people can “see their dreams come true and benefit together from the country's development”.
This is a substantial challenge for you.
Enabling all Chinese to realise their dreams through better education and employment, affordable housing, and stronger health care and social security.
Boosting social services and social security, in turn enabling people to be more confident about spending the money they earn and assisting theprocess of rebalancing.
Reducing disparities in wealth and income.
Meeting the expectations, shared by all people, for the rule of law and fair and honest administration - and, I would add, for the personal freedoms which give human dignity.In this respect, all of you as leaders in China are living through a considerable transition in the purposes and methods of your national policy.
In recent decades, your economic growth has been the key factor driving social change - and the key policy challenge has been to drive growth fast enough to meet existing social pressures.
In coming decades, continuing social change will be the key factor required to sustain economic growth - and the policy challenge will be addressing new social pressures fast enough to ensure the expansion of the economy is balanced.This transition in policy reflects a historic transition in the nation: large scale urbanisation, which has seen almost 85 million rural residents move to the cities in the past five years alone.
Your work now also reflects all the social and environmental demands this creates.
These new demands are key challenges for China's progress - progress which matters not just to you, but to the region and to the world.
We see that the task for China's leadership - to govern history's largest nation-state through one of history's greatest periods of change - is formidable indeed.
In the words of Premier Li Keqiang, reform demands “courage, wisdom and tenacity”.
For nations pursuing growth and change, bold and creative thinking - and hard choices - lie ahead.
Thirty years ago, Australia's national circumstances were very different to China's, just as they are today.
There is no one model, no single recipe for reform, but some common lessons can be shared and some common principles can be understood.In the years after Deng Xiaoping launched the market-oriented reforms which have remade China, Australia was also taking difficult but necessary steps to modernise our own economy.
Those reforms - like floating our currency, cutting tariffs, opening our financial sector to foreign competition - positioned us for growth in the decades of globalisation that followed.
Australia is a stronger, fairer, smarter nation as a result today.
We are now the 12th largest economy in the world.
We have enjoyed 21 consecutive years of economic growth.
Few nations emerged stronger from the global financial crisis.As it has been for you in China, one key to opening up our success has been greater integration into the global economy.
In our experience, one key to sustaining economic success has been continued domestic and social reform - and we know this is something you are grappling with today.
Alongside those economic changes, we have designed and implemented sophisticated social safety nets, to ensure the benefits of growth are felt by all our people.
Above all, universal health care and universal superannuation - and now we are extending these to provide national disability insurance as well.
Alongside those sophisticated social safety nets, we have also worked to ensure that the opportunities created by economic reform are available to all our people.
Especially through reform to Australia's systems of education and training and through investment in the skills and knowledge of our people.
These reform and investments play their role in strengthening our economy as a whole.
They also create substantial economic sectors in their own right - and substantial export industries in time.
Education has long been a key export for Australia, as you here well know.
Health and aged care holds great promise for Australia as our region grows wealthier and its people live longer.All this bears a connection to your work in this Academy.
The growing importance of China's domestic and social reforms - like strengthening health care and expanding social security - will denote a growing importance for local and provincial leadership.
This has long been vital to your social and human development.
In coming decades, it will be vital to balancing and sustaining national economic growth - vital to national success.
Australia wishes you very well in this endeavour and we are ready to play the role of a partner and friend in this great work: Australia has a keen interest in your success.
Each of our nations understands the need for long term plans for national progress.
Your own national roadmaps, like your 12th Five Year Plan, reflect this long perspective. Our Australia in the Asian Century White Paper outlines national objectives, pathways to get there, across five key areas for action in the years to 2025.
So let me outline the key elements of our plan: these areas of work which create such opportunity for our Chinese friends. The White Paper commits Australia to build a productive and resilient economy.
Our 2025 goal is to be in the world's top 5 for ease of doing business and the world's top 10 innovation systems.
This economic strength will offer great benefits to China.
Australia will remain a reliable long-term supplier of the resources your economy needs: a complementary strength with which we are all familiar.
Our diversifying economy will also be well placed to meet the demands of your expanding consumer markets.
Financial services is just one example of the new complementary strengths of our economies.
Direct currency trading was identified as a priority in the White Paper - something we are now delivering.
Further liberalisation in China's financial services sector, essential for your rebalancing, will benefit from experienced, capable and credentialed firms - and Australian financial houses have a long track record of successful operations here.Our White Paper sets out a plan for education and skills.
We know how much emphasis Asia's growing economies place on education.
Our 2025 goal is that our school system is in the top 5 in the world and 10 of our universities are in the world's top 100.
Already, five of Australia's thirty nine universities achieve this in the Shanghai Jiaotong world university rankings.
Over time, all Australian students will have the opportunity to undertake a continuous course of study throughout their years of schooling in an Asian language, including Mandarin.
I welcome CELAP's contribution to deepening ties through your relationships with Australian universities like the Australian National University, Latrobe University and the Queensland University of Technology.
Partnerships of this kind are helping Australia build Asia-capable institutions and people, an area where we have ambitious plans and goals.
These capabilities are the fundamental skills which will make Australians effective partners with China in this century of growth and change.
Our third key action area is to expand and integrate regional markets and build the presence of Australian firms in those markets.
Our 2025 goal: for Australia's trade links with Asia to be at least one-third of GDP, up from one-quarter in 2011.
To do this, Australian businesses must become fully part of the region: adjusting their strategies, linking with regional value chains and developing long term relations.
Above all - becoming more effective and efficient, more clever and quick, at meeting the needs of their partners - and here, the relevance for our Chinese friends will be very directly felt.The fourth area Australia identifies in our White Paper is deep and broad relationships with the region at all levels.
Our 2025 goal is to ensure that one third of the board members of Australia's top 200 companies and one third of the senior leadership of the Australian Public Service have deep experience in and knowledge of Asia.
Australia's engagement in the region is far more than a mercantile connection.
To take just one example, from the world of sport: it was only eight years ago that Australia joined the Asian Football Confederation. In 2015 we host the AFC Asian Cup.
In coming years we will seek to deepen all the personal connections between us, born of decades of links in education, tourism and culture.
And we will broaden our engagement in China - with a wider diplomatic footprint across your central and western regions.The fifth and final area for action is sustaining the security of our diverse region.
Our 2025 goal is for Asia to be a region of sustainable security in which habits of cooperation are the norm.
As our region changes, some strategic competition between its major powers is inevitable.
The task for us all is to ensure that competition is minimised, co-operation is maximised and disputes are managed peacefully, without the threat or use of force or coercion.
This can't be left to chance.
It will require conscious steps towards co-operation and trust-building by the region's leaders, bilaterally and through institutions like the East Asia Summit.
We will continue to work closely together at the UN and in the region.Australia's White Paper, like China's long-term plans, is necessarily broad.
Yet we each retain a clear focus on the prosperity of our peoples - and this remains the core of our work together.
The economic reality of our complementary strengths is the core of our relationship now - and these plans to build our respective economic strengths will be the core of our relationship in future.
There is much we share - together there is much we can do.
This city of Shanghai itself is a mighty symbol of all that you have achieved and all that lies ahead for us both.
From the design triumphs that are the towers of your financial district - to the engineering marvels that are the tunnels linking Pudong and Puxi beneath the Huangpu - and the civic heritage miracle we see in the revitalised Bund itself.
Shanghai's renaissance is also a dramatic proof that the engagement between Australia and China is a human, cultural and social connection.The quarter of a million Australians who live in Asia today are here as neighbours and friends.
Perhaps above all, the modern success of Shanghai is a symbol of Chinese challenges met by Chinese leadership.
I know that these challenges of change and growth stretch thousands of kilometres west and north of here.
I know too that the challenges you are grappling with in governing this vast nation dwarf even those you have overcome before.
As you meet these challenges, you have a friend and partner in Australia.
The century of growth and change that lies ahead is truly one we share.