Chinese links with Australia extend well beyond the last 40 years at an official and non-official level. Examples of early official contact include the Chinese Consul-General arriving in Melbourne in 1909. Dr Lin Sen visited Australia in 1930, shortly before becoming President of the then National Government of China. Australia (briefly) had a trade commissioner in China from 1921-22. This was followed in 1934 by a 'Mission to the Far East', led by then Deputy Prime Minister JG Latham — a trade mission, which was also Australia's first attempt at direct political engagement with China. In 1941, Australia appointed its first diplomatic official to China, based in the then-capital of Chungking (now Chongqing).
When the PRC was founded in 1949, rather than recognise the PRC, Australia retained diplomatic relations with the previous regime which had established itself on Taiwan. However, as early as 1954, Gough Whitlam advocated recognition — the first Australian Member of Parliament to do so (Whitlam, 2010). The Australian Labor Party adopted the policy of recognising the PRC in 1955, but it was another 17 years before the ALP was elected into government, led by Whitlam himself, on 2 December 1972. Less than three weeks later, on 21 December, Australia and China signed the joint communiqué establishing diplomatic relations