 A new book on the Australia-China relationship, titled A New Australia-China Agenda, was launched at Parliament House on Tuesday. Edited by Jeremy Barmay and Ryan Manuel from the ANU Australian Centre on China and the World, the book includes 30 essays by Chinese scholars, journalists, business people and academics. The book contains a number of essays from the most senior Chinese think tank as well as a number of essays from very senior Chinese academics of places like Peking University. What's most interesting is not just the thoughts they contain, but actually the juxtaposition between the official thoughts from the think tank, which must be signed off by the Politburo, which is the decision-making body of China, but the thoughts by people that are unofficial and the gap between the two. And really what that summarises in a nutshell is they want a relationship. It's not just about necessarily seeing Australia as part of another nation's ideas or part of a regional push, it's actually having a relationship with Australia, with Australians as individuals, with Australian thought and society, with Australian foreign politics, yes, and Australian economics, obviously, but with Australia more broadly as a country, as a society, as a nation. And it's that desire for a relationship that really forms the cornerstone of what we've called a new Australia-China Agenda. One of the essays in the book stresses the importance of bilingualism. Not just for instrumental reasons like tourism and things like that, but also for broader things like just understanding this massive country that's so important to us. It's not just about us being able to order food better or having an easier trip, or even Chinese people having an easier trip while they're here. It's saying that this is a country that is so important to us that we want to understand this country, its relations and the language is a big part of that.