 For the first time, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has openly warned Australia against tightening trade ties with China. We spoke to ANU College of Asia and the Pacific expert Professor Hugh White for his take on Clinton's comments. Well, I think what she's reflecting is a concern in the United States, an understandable concern in the United States. The stronger Australia's economic relationship with China becomes, the more dependent Australia becomes on trade with China economically, the more reluctant Australia will be to confront China on strategic questions and therefore the less useful we will be to the United States as it tries to build a network of alliances in Asia designed to respond to China's challenge to American primacy. And that is of course what America's all about, that's what the pivot is all about. That was one of Hillary Clinton's great, perhaps her most significant step as Secretary of State when she was Secretary of State and we can be sure it will be central to her emerging campaign for the presidency in 2016. So she's saying to Australia, don't get too close to China because if you get too close to China you won't be supporting us as strongly as we want as we try and push back against China's challenge to our primacy in Asia. This is a very significant message from a very significant American. China is just as uncomfortable with Australia's relationship with the US. The situation hasn't prompted Australia to side with one country rather than the other. White says doing nothing to address the matter isn't wise and that at some stage a choice will have to be made. Well the point at which we have to make that choice depends on the attitude of the other two countries. We don't get to choose whether we have to choose. They will decide whether we have to choose because they will decide whether they're prepared to accept our relationship with the other as their competition with one another amplifies and what we're seeing from these statements from Hillary Clinton is that she now thinks at the point it's been reached where Australia's relationship with China cannot get any bigger without damaging our alliance with the United States. That's the real message behind this very significant set of comments that she's made. On the other hand from China's side, China will reach a point I think where China says to us you can't develop your strategic relationship with America without damaging our economic relationship with us and I think we came quite close to that here at ANU just earlier this week with Professor Wushenbaugh from Fudan University who delivered a very carefully modulated but unmistakable message that Australia would have to consider how much closer we can build our alliance with the United States and much we can go developing new ideas like for example the Marines based in Darwin and further developments along those lines without that affecting our credentials as a reliable supplier of strategic materials to China. So I think this week from both the Chinese and the American side we've had the message that the time has come that we are going to have to start making choices and it's not the big choice we don't have to decide to side with China and abandon America or side with America and abandon China but that as we develop each relationship the concerns of the other partner will limit what we can do so we won't be able to just build our relationship with America as if China didn't exist and we won't just be able to build our relationship with China as if America didn't exist we're going to have to make careful choices to position ourselves between them and those are going to be choices between our prosperity and our security between our past very deeply embedded in that idea of US primacy and going back to the British Empire and all that sort of stuff in our future as an investment with Asia for a long time we haven't had to make those choices that hasn't been our great fortune for the last 40-50 years in particular as we've been able to build our relationship with Asia and especially with China as much as we've liked without stepping back from our alliance with the United States but now as the US and China become more competitive our choices become much starker. China accounts for more than 35% of Australia's trade when Prime Minister Tony Abbott visited the US in June national security was at the top of his agenda since both trade and security are essential to Australia it's not an option to focus on one rather than the other. My argument has been that the really essential thing for Australia is to try and prevent that kind of choice being forced upon us but that requires us to do something we've never done before and which I think Australian political leaders on both sides of politics are very timid about trying and that is to see what we can do to shape the US-China relationship our problem we don't want to make a choice. In fact any choice between the US and China is catastrophic precisely because security and prosperity are both essential to us so our only way of avoiding that disaster really is to try and influence the US-China relationship to make it less competitive and I think that's terribly complex question in detail but in outlines actually very simple the US and China can live in peace together with one another if they find a way to share power in Asia. America can't dominate Asia the way it has for the last 40 or 50 years China can't I don't think should dominate Asia the way I think perhaps it would like to the US should retain a very strong role in Asia but not as dominant as it has been China should play a stronger role in Asia but not as strong as it would like they're going to have to find a way to share power with one another if we're going to avoid the catastrophic choice we face but Australian political leaders have been reluctant to timid perhaps not imaginative enough perhaps not worried enough not aware enough of the dangers to try and do what we can and I don't think there's nothing we can do do what we can to try and shape the future US-China relationship. While I was in China in April Tony Abbott didn't mention the US by name at all. Tony Abbott's diplomacy and to be fair like Julia Giller's diplomacy to a certain extent has has has concentrated on the thought that we can develop our relationship with China without talking about America we can talk develop our relationship with America without talking about China as if these can be kept in completely separate compartments and of course they can't in particular they can't because in both Washington and in Beijing what Australia does with the other is the thing they're most interested in. In America Australia is of interest strategically and politically primarily for how it plays into their great competition with China. In Beijing they care about what Australia is doing politically and strategically because of the way it plays in to their rivalry with America so we can't pretend we can develop these two relationships in isolation so I think increasingly we're going to have to have a much more sophisticated diplomacy than we've had in the past and then of course you have to add Japan because this is not there they're not two players in this great power rivalry in North East Asia but free and of course Japan is also enormously important to us. Next week Prime Minister Abe will be here in Canberra if you believe the newspaper reports we're going to announce a further expansion of our defense relationship with Japan and so in Beijing they're keeping an eye on two things how's our defense relationship with America developing that's one thing how's our defense relationship with Japan developing that to China is even more neuralgic even more difficult because at least the Americans accept that the Chinese accept that we've always had an alliance with the United States they know that sort of part of what we are but the idea that we're building this new and very different much more intimate strategic relationship with Japan which is you know not something that's been part of our background they I think in Beijing they're inclined to see that as very much directed against them and as their strategic relationship with Japan becomes frankly more and more adversarial worse and worse the closeness the increasing intimacy between Australia and Japan becomes more and more problematic for China this is the reality of great power competition this is a world where Australia is living at the moment whereas our political leaders I think on both sides of politics are still living in an era where as long as Washington was happy everything was fine we don't live in that world anymore