A prominent Chinese academic argues the conditions are right for a US–China “grand bargain”. But recent events in Venezuela and the Middle East raise hard questions about what kind of America China is dealing with.
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Richard Cullen
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Can Washington still strike a grand bargain with Beijing?
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The China shift: Australia’s universities in an age of suspicion
Over four decades, Australian universities developed strong teaching and research ties with China. But a wave of fear-driven policies and rising national security pressures has reshaped those relationships. Are we witnessing a retreat from engagement – or the start of a new era? (more…)
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Orwell foresees the 21st century
George Orwell completed his most famous novel 1984 in 1948, shortly before his early death at 46. A few years earlier, in a remarkable short 1945 essay, Orwell foresaw a future world order overseen by America, Russia and China. (more…)
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Erasing Gaza’s ecosystem
Israel is rightly known for its technological prowess, not least when it comes to making war. (more…)
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Savage American justice
Imagine you are a country faced with drug smuggling by a nearby neighbour. As a government, what might you do about this? (more…)
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Immobilising confirmation of atrocities in Gaza
Stefan Tarnowski is an assistant professor and anthropologist based at Cambridge University. His most recent article published by the London Review of Books is Plausible Deniability. (more…)
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US’ deceitful tactic will have wide consequences
Richard Cullen says the Pentagon launched illegal attack on Iran while Trump claimed commitment to diplomacy. (more…)
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The obscenity of American preaching
One way to get a robust, comparative fix on how obscene American global preaching about human rights has become is (borrowing a vivid image from Caitlin Johnstone) to imagine what the world might think about a scorching lecture from a Taliban leader on the Western oppression of women and women’s rights. (more…)
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Trump’s tariffs look exceptionally bad for Taiwan
The direct impact of the extraordinary, “Liberation Day” US tariff regime is bad for Taiwan. The indirect effects may prove to be graphically worse. (more…)
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China’s calm response to US’ impulsive tariffs gets noticed
Shortly after China and the United States announced tariff adjustment measures in Geneva, Switzerland, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Aron Solomon argued in a Newsweek article that the US now has an administration that “governs not with strategy, but with impulse”. (more…)
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Who holds the better cards – China or the US?
The mainstream Western media and global, alternative media outlets have been delivering a remarkable converging stream of blistering commentary since 2 April on what is now widely called, even by The Economist, Trump’s tariff tantrum. (more…)
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A hillbilly White House and the wisdom of peasants
In 2016, US Vice-President J.D. Vance published a best-selling memoir titled Hillbilly Elegy. Curiously, he explained on the Fox News network recently that China’s pivotal influence on American consumption was due to the US borrowing “money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture” (YouTube link here). Let’s consider the sort of individuals in question. (more…)
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The mother of all own goals?
Following the White House announcement of the “Liberation Day” tariffs, Andrew Tillett, writing in The Australian Financial Review, argued that, “Trump just gave China a free kick to tilt Asia in its favour”. (paywall) At Foreign Policy, the deputy editor, Amelia Lester, was wondering, at the same time, “Are Tariffs the End of the Australia-US Friendship”.(paywall) (more…)
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An arresting American Gaza challenge
Recent US commentary backing President Trump’s extraordinary American Gaza takeover project has regularly stressed how critics should come up with a better plan. (more…)
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AUKUS: Many chickens but no subs
John Menadue recently argued convincingly that the “AUKUS chickens were coming home to roost already”. Shortly thereafter, the Guardian helpfully reported that a “Trump pick for the Pentagon says selling submarines to Australia would be ‘crazy’ if Taiwan tensions flare”. (more…)
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Jerry Cohen: An inspiring scholar
The leading US journal Foreign Policy has just published an extended profile, written by Jonathan Landreth, of Professor Jerome A. Cohen, entitled: “The Last China Hand. Jerry Cohen will be 95 in July this year. The article lucidly explains how he “has spent a lifetime trying to understand the People’s Republic of China”. (more…)
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Can Europe dare to do the smart thing and partner with China in Africa?
Europe’s relationship with Africa encompasses significant grim history. Yet the continent is more central to how Europe’s future will look than ever. Meanwhile, China’s remarkably constructive relationship with Africa today presents a potential primary mode for substantially enhancing Africa’s prospects. This geopolitical fact also represents a crucial opportunity for Europe to partner with China and confidently shape its own future. Provided, that is, Europe hasn’t, influenced by the US, crushed its capacity to act in its own best interests. (more…)
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US’ ‘China Initiative’ would be counterproductive
The “China Initiative” was the name of a controversial program run by the US Department of Justice, which was introduced in late 2018 during the first Trump administration. (more…)
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The lawless West
The low regard in which the Global West is held is intensifying. The second Trump administration is not the cause of this. It is simply accelerating this ominous process by openly embracing a lawless, imperial contempt for primary international and metropolitan governance rules, norms and conventions in response to the persistent retreat of American global dominance. Meanwhile, the Global South clearly observes how America’s traditional allies remain overwhelmingly loyal — or silent — as the US persists in asserting its role as their exceptionally unworthy leader. (more…)
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Is America marching in the final footsteps of the British empire?
Yu-Book Lim used to head a Singapore think tank and was Executive Chairman of IMC Plantations before that. He has just published an extended, thought-provoking essay: “Xi Jinping’s “Once-in-a-Century Upheaval” Prophecy. (more…)
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How Europe is degrading Europe
The European Idea is anchored by the desire to banish war from the continent forever and foster collective development by creating a quasi-federated Europe. This idea is embodied in the step-by-step creation of the European Union (EU). That idea today looks exceptionally compromised, not least due to growing European divergence about how the EU’s best interests can be secured. Moreover, despite its fundamentally destabilising impact, American power ruthlessly shaping this outcome is compliantly welcomed by European elites. Any “Euro-tiger” image once projected by the EU in its prime has now vanished. (more…)
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Why Ukraine is losing ground
An instructive new article entitled, “Why is Ukraine losing ground? Mobilisation crisis and command failures exposed,” has recently been published online by Euromaidan Press. Its cogency is amplified by the fact that it is, fundamentally, a pro-Ukraine essay. (more…)
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China and America in 2050
In early December, 2024, The University of Hong Kong (HKU) hosted a lucid dialogue entitled: “China in 2050 – Two Perspectives”. The presenters were recognised China scholars, Professor Rana Mitter of Harvard University and Professor Daniel Bell from HKU. “What might be a realistic and desirable future for China” was a primary question addressed. Although the focus was fundamentally on China, the discussion implicitly raised the question of where the US may find itself in 2050.
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Western tourists rediscover Chinese mainland, HK
Fifty years ago, I enjoyed an overnight stay in Hong Kong while on my way from Melbourne to visit the United Kingdom for the first time. Hong Kong was already established as a “tourist and shopping paradise” by then. I remember being somewhat bewildered by the crowds of people everywhere I went. But it was still a marvellous experience, and I came away with an excellent new Japanese camera and portable cassette recorder, which cost half what they did in Australia. (more…)
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Will America ever curb its love of warfare?
After meeting Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris recently, US president-elect Donald Trump called for an immediate ceasefire in the Ukraine war, according to a report in The Guardian, adding that, “Ukraine would like to make a deal” to end its war with Russia. Newsmax reported that at about the same time, Trump wished to end “the madness” in Ukraine through negotiation. (more…)
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Manufacturing consent with a pivotal signifier
Most of the world believes, today, that the Western use of the term, terrorism, is wilfully warped to advance a destructive political agenda. This same manipulative usage remains indispensably effective in the West, however. It fundamentally underpins, for example, the monstrous process lately identified by Stuart Rees as the “normalisation of atrocity.” (more…)
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Chomsky is right says Professor Walt
The wide-ranging political views of the exceptional, international public intellectual, Noam Chomsky, have recently been searchingly assessed in the journal, Foreign Policy, by Professor Stephen M Walt, in an article entitled, “Noam Chomsky Has Been Proved Right”. (more…)
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Western democracy now finds itself in a parlous state
In 1947, former British prime minister Winston Churchill famously observed that: “Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” (more…)
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Foolish anxiety in the global west
Around 18 months ago, The Economist applied uncommon energy to advance the narrative that the US economy was in outstandingly good shape. Very recently, we have been instructed by the same influential British weekly that, “America’s economy is bigger and better than ever” [paywall]: Which makes one wonder, what primary anxieties are prompting these distinctive, recurrent expressions of avid admiration? (more…)
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“An integral part of China”: America, Taiwan and Elon Musk
The outcome in the recent US presidential election may yet push Taiwan in directions at variance with those advocated in a new article published in the America journal Foreign Affairs, which argues that: “China’s Gray-Zone Offensive Against Taiwan is Backfiring”. (more…)