Stephen FitzGerald
Australia’s first ambassador to China 1973 to 1976
EDUCATION:
• 1957-1960: University of Tasmania, Asian History • 1966-1968: PhD, Australian National University, Canberra
BOOKS AND AWARDS:
• 1977: China and the World,
ANU Press
• 1984: Officer of the Order of Australia
• 2015: Comrade Ambassador: Whitlam’s Beijing Envoy,
Melbourne University Publishing
BORN:
Hobart, Tasmania, 1938
CAREER:
• 1961-1966: Department of External Affairs
• 1971: Adviser to Labor opposition leader, Gough Whitlam
• 1973-1976: Ambassador to
China
• 1975-1976: Ambassador to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
• 1980-2010: Established private consultancy for Australian businesses dealing with government in China
• 1987-1988: Chaired the Australian government’s Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies, which wrote the landmark report, Immigration: A Commitment to Australia
• 1990-2004: Professor and head of the University of New South Wales’ Asia-Australia Institute
• 1991: Member of the first Australian Human Rights Delegation to China
• 1998-2002: Member of the Foreign Affairs Council • Since the late 1960s, he has been involved in public policy development and reform in Australia’s relations with Asia and for an Asia-literate Australian society.
• He was professorial fellow and head of the Department of Far Eastern History and the Contemporary China Centre at the Australian National University, Canberra, in the late 1970s.
• In the 1980s, he chaired the Hawke government’s Asian Studies Council, which in 1988 developed a national strategy for the study of Asia in Australia.
• Since 2004 he has been chairman of the Griffith Asia Institute and research strategy director of the University of Technology Sydney’s China Research Centre.
• He is currently chairman of the independent public policy initiative China Matters, a distinguished fellow at the Whitlam Institute at the University of Western Sydney, and an honorary fellow at the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.