Category: China

The pivotal reason that peace has endured for 70 years has disappeared. President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping has declared he wants to oversee movement toward unification during his lifetime.

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The People’s Republic of China continues to reject overtures for high-level ministerial dialogue while maintaining that Australia bears the lion’s share of responsibility to create a situation in which the relationship can be improved.

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By doubling down on Trump’s ‘in your face’ pursuit of military domination, the Biden China team seems to be proffering more of the same to the region — instability and a drift toward confrontation and conflict.

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China speaks of the ‘community of the shared future for mankind’, and ‘win–win cooperation’; it plays balance-of-power politics and acts in ways that take advantage of others in adversity. China’s aim is to establish its supremacy in areas of productive technology, trade networks and financing options in ways that shut out competition. (more…)

The key acknowledgement behind the UK’s new immigrations scheme is that the UK no longer fears being swamped by Asians but on the contrary sees potential financial benefit from an influx of wealthy and well-educated Hong Kong families.
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A massive economic ecosystem centred on China is evolving in the region. Yet Australia is playing itself out of the game. It dug itself into a hole when it humiliated China by calling for an international inquiry into Covid-19. All of Asia is watching to see who will blink first, and it is unlikely to be Beijing.

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As the 50th anniversary of Australia’s 1971 opening to China approaches it is time to tell the true story of how a team of confused ping pong players and journalists hunting for a scoop opened Australia/China relations.

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On his last day as US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo declared China’s human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region constituted “genocide” against ethnic Uighur Muslims. This outrageous declaration was the last of many that Pompeo has issued in a deliberate attempt to destroy relations with China on his way out of office. (more…)

It is almost 50 years since Australia and China agreed to enter into diplomatic relations. The path to agreement had its complications and soon after I retired from DFAT I set about refreshing my memory and that of others involved at the time. The result of this research was published in “Quadrant” in March 1998 and is repeated here without change (though many named here have since died). It offers an inside view of what took place. (more…)

A SERIES of posts on this blog in the last two weeks have highlighted aspects of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that are often overlooked in discussion of the bilateral relationship. We have to get used to living with the Chinese elephant in our neighbourhood.

In a year that has been harrowing in so many ways, these last few weeks have been particularly unpleasant for many of us involved in the increasingly ugly and fractious “China debates”. Well before Senator Abetz’s alarming inquisition into the loyalties of three Chinese-Australians, I had been reflecting on my own part in these debates, and on the role of the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) and the China Story Project as well. This is my attempt to articulate some of those reflections in writing. (more…)

China is feeling increasingly cornered–both politically and militarily in the South China Sea. The presence of US allies’ navies and in particular the joining of US FONOPs there will exacerbate that sense of desperation and perhaps prompt a kinetic response from China. They need to weigh carefully the consequences of tempting fate in the South China Sea. (more…)

The widening strategic differences between Australia and China and how these affect their bilateral relations is nothing new. In fact, the tide arguably changed as early as in 2017, to be constantly pushed further by an Australia that has grown more and more assertive and outspoken about what it believes.

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China’s rapid ascent within the world of scientific research as got other leading nations on the edge of their seat. (more…)

While the dust of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s overreaction to a satirical image tweeted by a Chinese diplomat – and subsequent rhetorical clashes with Beijing – has yet to settle, another much more pressing challenge has been put on Morrison’s desk. (more…)