President Trump’s emerging foreign policy ideology is forcing US allies, including Australia, to reassess their strategic positions. As American leadership becomes increasingly transactional, Canberra must navigate a shifting global order by balancing security concerns with economic resilience, forging new regional partnerships, and maintaining strategic flexibility in an era of geopolitical uncertainty. (more…)
Tag: China
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Trade and tariffs: Reality and fantasy
Donald Trump’s recent actions with respect to the use of tariffs as a weapon to re-industrialise America demonstrates not only an utter failure to understand the economics of that move but also the geo-economic realities of the world in which those actions are being taken. (more…)
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The only enemy the US has in the drug war is itself
No one wakes up one day and says to him or herself that today is the day I’ll become a drug addict – society pushes people, in some cases high disposable wealth creates a sense of boredom from which the stimulus of recreational drugs is a form of escape, in others it’s peer pressure, we see others doing it, they encourage us to try and off we go down a slippery slope. (more…)
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Media paladins of Fortress Australia
You have to admire Australian media. While the rest of us are busy paying $8 for a flat white and wondering how to stretch a pack of IndoMie for a week, our intrepid journalists are fearlessly focused on the real threats – like Chinese naval ships operating in full compliance with international law. (more…)
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Global capitals eye future with investments in China’s tech industry
A dozen days ahead of this Chinese New Year, a large-scale exhibition opened at the Hong Kong Museum of Art. (more…)
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Falun Gong leaders disprove immortality by inconveniently dying
According to US Congressman Scott Perry, I’m part of an online strategy designated by Xi Jinping in December of last year to fight Falun Gong’s growth. If only I were that important! (more…)
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A five-minute scroll
The Chinese Embassy in the US underlines the country’s differences with the US. Marco Rubio and Boris Johnson refer to the war in Ukraine as a proxy war, while Rubio also reaffirms Trump’s warning to Hamas. Ohad Kozminsky of the Jewish Council of Australia shares his views on Western colonialism and Gaza. (more…)
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The Australian jellyfish: Anti-China Media Watch
The Australian labels Albanese a “jellyfish” in the face of Chinese naval vessels, ironically the barbs came from a faceless columnist. Kudos to The Australian for keeping tabs on a US nuclear submarine in our waters, but the headline act for the Murdoch masthead was hosting its own event for weapons makers and China hawks. (more…)
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Russophobia and Sinophobia: projection, narcissism and denial
There is a certain cadence to decline, a rhythm of arrogance and desperation, of miscalculation and delusion. The late-stage empire, unmoored from reality yet clinging to myths of its own indispensability, lashes out at perceived threats not because they are real, but because it cannot conceive of a world in which it is no longer the gravitational centre of history. In this way, Russophobia and Sinophobia function not merely as ideological constructs, but as symptoms of systemic decay, the fever dreams of a civilisation struggling to process its own obsolescence. (more…)
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A five-minute scroll
Trump give his first views on China policy. Sarah Henderson criticises ABC for including Jewish Council of Australia in their programs.The LNP has confirmed that Australians will pay to see their GP under Dutton. Penny Wong welcomes 25 Somare-Whitlam scholars to Australia and a call for truth to be a key factor in political advertising. (more…)
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The Chinese invasion begins: Anti-China Media Watch
Is a flotilla of Chinese ships on a reconnaissance mission for a future invasion of Australia or, as the Australian Defence Force admits, is China doing to us what we’ve been doing to them for decades? (more…)
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Jeffrey Sachs’ explosive address at the EU Parliament sends shockwaves across Europe!
Jeffrey Sachs, the American economist and public policy analyst who is also a professor at Columbia University, gave an unconventional address to the EU Parliament last week. Below is a short version of his comments; the full version is here. (more…)
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What US wants for Ukraine must serve as a warning to Taiwan, Australia and others
So, US Secretary of Defence Hesgeth has made it clear that what most of us knew three years ago will come to pass. (more…)
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An empire in denial
History rarely surprises those who pay attention. The trajectory of the current geopolitical order — from the war in Ukraine to the economic realignments centred on China and the Global South — follows patterns as old as recorded time. Yet, in the West, political elites and media institutions remain bewildered. How could the unchallenged dominance of the post-Cold War era erode so rapidly? How could NATO’s eastward expansion provoke conflict? How could the Western-designed financial order face credible challenges from Eurasian powers once dismissed as marginal players? (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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The fragility of Australia’s security
This time it’s different. America has detailed plans for Australia to play a role in breaking China. Not unlike the role of Ukraine against Russia. Or countless other parallels. That’s what is in the pipeline for Australia. Decades of war at oscillating levels, designed to drain China, mounted largely by America’s friends in Asia, under supervision. (more…)
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China: Still ahead of the curve in the global economic game
US President Donald Trump’s decision to first place, and then delay, a 25% tariff on goods from neighbouring Canada and Mexico, along with his hitting China with an additional 10% tariff increase has made quite a splash in the news. (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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Will New Zealand invade the Cook Islands to stop China?
New Zealand’s leading newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, screamed out this headline on 10 February: “Should New Zealand invade the Cook Islands?” (more…)
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Locked up in Beijing: Anti-China Media Watch
An Australian national is locked up in a Beijing jail for five years. Led by Sky News, the media maintains his innocence, based on nothing more than his word… and the “fact” that innocents are locked up because the Chinese police are jealous. (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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Australia’s ‘suspicious’ links to DeepSeek: Anti-China Media Watch
The ABC’s Andrew Greene has found an Australian link to Chinese AI platform DeepSeek, a Chinese national who holds post-graduate degrees from Monash University and the University of Adelaide. No surprise, ASPI is lurking in the background of the sinister allegations against an Australian educated PhD, while that researcher, Dr. Zizheng Pan, is hiding in plain sight. (more…)
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China’s digital sputnik moment
DeepSeek was virtually unknown when the year began. It is now shaking global stock markets and being called a “sputnik moment” for the US. Last month, xiao hong shi (Little Red Book) also emerged from seemingly nowhere, as US TikToc users began migrating en masse to this Chinese social media site in anticipation of TikTok being shut down. These follow a string of announcements by China’s digital tech giants on new developments in high-end semiconductor chips. (more…)
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Breaking barriers: The transformative impact of people-to-people exchange
American talk show host Jimmy Fallon humorously remarked, “Americans would literally rather learn Mandarin than use Instagram Reels!” Recently, more than 700,000 users who call themselves “TikTok refugees” from the United States flocked to a popular Chinese social media app named RedNote (or Xiaohongshu). This unexpected “migration” has connected netizens from the two great nations like never before. (more…)
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Trump’s Gaza grab shows America is no better than China
Australia’s former top diplomat says Donald Trump may achieve what 75 years of post-war anti-Americanism could not: concede the case for moral equivalence. (more…)
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Why Trump 2.0 still can’t win the trade war with China
On the third day after Donald Trump announced the imposition of 25% and 10% tariffs on imported Canadian and Chinese goods respectively, Canada yielded and co-operated with Trump’s demands, in exchange for a one-month suspension of the agreement by the US. (more…)
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Renewed US-China tensions are trouble for Australia’s economy
Trump 2.0 is in full swing, and tariffs are emerging again as a policy of choice for the president. Trump has imposed or threatened tariffs against all of the US’s top trading partners, including Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. (more…)
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Silence on ‘evil’ China: Anti-China Media Watch
While the big China threat remains AI platform DeepSeek, The Australian reminds us that the true “evil” is Canberra not doing anything about China’s threat to national security, and Nine Newspapers remind us that LNP politicians taking money from rich Chinese-Australians are good, while their benefactors are likely up to no good. (more…)
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Western commentators still unable to see the advances in China
China today is not the China of the pre-COVID age, but many commentators think it is still an economy based on cheap manufacturing. (more…)
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DeepSeek’s success challenges assumptions about Chinese tech companies – and the US-China competition
The release of the new DeepSeek-R1 artificial intelligence (AI) model has shocked the tech world. (more…)