ABSTRACT
Australia through the 1980s and 1990s made what it deemed an earnest effort to be accepted as a friend and neighbour of East Asia. Although it was a new chapter in terms of intensity and commitment this effort was essentially rooted in the thinking of the Casey era and much of it could have been scripted from his 1958 book Friends and Neighbours (mainly written by James Plimsoll 1 ). The vast changes which had taken place in East Asia in the intervening years underscored the relevance and prescience of the Casey/Plimsoll view of Australia's situation. In the meantime the European colonial holdings and influence had gone. The United States had been forced to abandon its attempt to prevent the coming to power of the communist party of Vietnam. In most of the rest of East Asia the threat of communism had gone and been replaced by rapid economic development with very active participation in world trade and investment. There was an expectation that this would continue indefinitely and that Japan, the first and most successful East Asian country to modernize its economic system, would lead the way. As Japan became richer and more successful and moved into ever more sophisticated levels of technology others in the region would take up the more labour-intensive and less advanced industries with Japanese investment. So the process would go on, with Japan leading the way and others being drawn along in her wake. This appeared to be what was happening until almost the end of the century.
