Word: australia
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...suburb of one of the world's most isolated cities, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wants you to know that he feels your pain - to a point. A bedroom community of Perth, Western Australia, Cockburn until recently shared in the buoyant growth rates that turned this part of the southern continent into a giant construction zone. No more. As Australia's great mining boom deflated due to slackening demand from China and the global recession, the region around Cockburn saw unemployment go from 2.1% last October to 7.2% in April. Roughly a year and a half after his victory over...
...geographic remoteness notwithstanding, Australia deserves watching. As both a long and loyal ally of the U.S., and at the same time a nation whose economy increasingly depends on a partnership with China, it has a chance to show the rest of the world the importance of maintaining good relations with both the new century's superpowers. Rudd has positioned himself as the man to pull off that trick...
...Prime Minister's political connection to the U.S. is obvious enough. Like Barack Obama, he's a bit of a geek, a churchgoing centrist liberal who immerses himself in policy detail, chatting fluently on everything from grants for first-time homeowners to the state of broadband connectivity in Australia. But he's familiar with China, too: Rudd speaks fluent Mandarin - the only non-Chinese world leader to boast this linguistic achievement - and in an interview with TIME he rattled through the biographies of some of China's lesser-known Cabinet members. If Rudd can navigate warm and friendly relations with...
...date about what, at another time and involving other people and another company, might conceivably be a relatively ordinary case of suspected industrial espionage. But the timing, the people and the company involved in this case make it anything but routine. The arrests have thrown already-fraught relations between Australia and China - its largest trading partner - into an uproar, and for good reason: Stern Hu and his deputies were in charge of Rio Tinto's negotiations over the price of iron ore with Chinese steelmakers. China is now the word's largest consumer of iron ore, and Rio its largest...
...Chinalco deal died mainly for economic reasons, but that didn't mean the Chinese were happy about it. In fact, an investment banker close to the proposed deal says "they were furious - not just the company, but the government." The banker notes that Chinalco CEO Xiong Weiping was in Australia offering to amend the terms of the deal in order to salvage it just before Rio demurred...