“Your visit can be described as carrying on the past and opening up the future,” Chinese President Xi Jinping told visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Beijing on Monday afternoon, citing the fact that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the trip made by Gough Whitlam, the first Australian leader to visit China. (more…)
Tag: China
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China’s removal of tariffs on Australian wine: Is it what it seems?
China’s offer to negotiate the removal of its ‘tariffs’ on imports of Australian wine is seen by many as a generous act to facilitate the current visit by the Prime Minister. (more…)
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Australian PM’s China visit helps normalise relations, says Andrew Robb
Former Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb, in an exclusive interview with People’s Daily Online, said he viewed the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to China as another step toward normalising political relations. (more…)
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The rise of China’s “Australianists”: game-changing opportunity for bilateral relations
Vision, passion, and commitment of the forerunners in the Australian Studies community in China and Australia have paved the way for the emergence of such an exceptional intellectual community over four decades. It is a visionary and responsible question to ask: where should the community head in the next four decades? (more…)
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Decoupling in the knowledge production sphere threatens Australia’s future
An intimate and complex understanding of China is now one of the most important prerequisites for understanding and furthering our national interests. For the two nations of China and Australia, to allow tensions and misunderstandings to provoke a decoupling in the knowledge production sphere –whether it be in the sciences, the social sciences or the humanities – would be extremely unwise, from the point of view of securing Australia’s future. (more…)
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A briefing for Prime Minister Albanese for his discussion with President Xi
You will receive briefings from many of your advisors, including from the Office of National Intelligence. My experience is that intelligence agencies have a lot of information but they often have poor judgement. The framing of issues by our intelligence agencies very often reflects the views and habits of the US and the Anglosphere. (more…)
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Looking on the bright side: Report from Beijing
Australian Studies scholars in China are optimistic that relations can “get back to normal”. This is the impression I gained from a recent symposium at one of the major Australian Studies Centres in that country. University colleagues I met while in Beijing were all encouraged by news of the forthcoming visit by Prime Minister Albanese and had great hopes for positive outcomes. (more…)
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Australia does not have to choose between China and the United States
The biggest challenge Australia is facing now probably is not how to maintain a balance between China and the United States, or to choose a side between the two, but instead how to serve the interests of its own people. The choice facing Australia is between standing on the side of division and confrontation, or alternatively on the side of cooperation and prosperity. (more…)
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From Gough to Albo: Destination Shanghai
Shanghai is coming back as a destination city and on this visit by Prime Minister Albanese he will be made very welcome by his Chinese hosts as well as those Australians who have persevered doing their business in China during the dark days of Covid and those incredibly difficult bilateral tensions. (more…)
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China’s EV industry future reflects solar power’s extraordinary past growth
It is a serious mistake to underestimate the strength and capacity of China’s commitment to its green new dream. (more…)
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In the Chinese new era, what’s new is old
Industrial transformation has accelerated China’s rise as a global power. In the New Era, which was officially recognised in the Chinese national constitution in 2017, the narrative of national rejuvenation is writ large: it underpins the Community of Shared Future, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and China’s various soft power campaigns. (more…)
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Mimetic engulfment: The US has captured the Australian strategic mind
It is now the case that Australia’s alliance with the United States is best described as the Great Harmonisation. On all principal matters of strategic interest – especially in all fundamental aspects of China as the “pacing threat” – the overwhelming impression is that, though Washington and Canberra are spatially separated, they nevertheless speak and act not only in parallel, but simultaneously, systematically and congruently so that a single, seamless narrative emanates. (more…)
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Michael Pascoe: ‘Dingo Warriors’ bait Albanese’s China visit
Former Australian ambassador to China, Geoff Raby, last week wrote a piece praising the rise of diplomacy in our dealings with Beijing, claiming that since changing prime minister, we don’t have a defence minister and senior public servants beating the drums of war, running roughshod over the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. (more…)
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China and the apocalypse: How the West reinvents the end of history
After China entered the period of “reform and openness” in the 1980s, Western liberalism, embracing a form of ‘apocalyptic modernity’, adhered to the fantasy that China “would become like us.” What it meant in fact was that China “would become like us but be subservient to us”. If China was not going to “become like us [and be subservient to us]” it had to be put in its place. It is time to call this out. (more…)
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Greater sunrise and the new Timor-Leste – China Comprehensive Strategic Framework
Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos Horta has been pressing the Albanese government to somehow enable Woodside Petroleum to go forward with the development of the Greater Sunrise Gasfields and the processing of the gas on Timor-Leste’s south coast. He says that his country could turn to China if Australia doesn’t help. On September 23, 2023, Timor-Leste’s Prime Minister Gusmão signed a Comprehensive Strategic Framework with China, thus increasing the pressure. (more…)
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China sees remarkable growth in global soft power
Almost all geopolitical “soft power” explanations draw on the seminal analysis by the Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye, who promoted the term in his 1990 book Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. At that time, he wrote, “When one country gets other countries to want what it wants (this) might be called co-optive or soft power in contrast with the hard or command power of ordering others to do what it wants.” (more…)
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Cheng Lei’s release a win for diplomacy
Make no mistake, had the Australian Government not changed last year, Chen Lei would still be languishing in her miserable detention cell, denied access to her children, relatives, and friends. (more…)
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Is China hiding a missing submarine in the sea?
If we were to believe the UK’s Daily Mail, China should be in mourning, they have lost a crew of 55 and a Nuclear submarine. The Times, historically, a reputable media outlet led with the headline that “China kills own sailors with a trap set for British and US submarines”. (more…)
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The Wily Occidentals
Can Australia reconcile the American and Chinese strands of its foreign policy? (more…)
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Engaging with China despite rising tensions
The challenges of engagement when international tensions rise go beyond defence and security considerations. The benefits, however, are vitally important and deserve continued investment. It is essential therefore to consider carefully the terms of engagement – the sometimes conflicting principles that should guide engagement. (more…)
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A week of golden negativity
Last week was China’s “Golden Week”. It is so called because it is the longest holiday of the year, with the period of Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day fused into one marathon stint. (more…)
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“I wouldn’t start from here”: Advice on Australia-China relations
Engaging China: How Australia can lead the way again (Sydney University Press 2023) reviews most aspects of the Australia-China relations and proposes useful ways to develop them for the national benefit. Jointly edited by Jamie Reilly and Jingdong Yuan, it includes contributions from thirteen scholars, journalists and former diplomats, a foreword by former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and a postscript by former Ambassador Stephen FitzGerald. It does not apologise for its advocacy of greater engagement in a productive and secure manner. (more…)
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Five things that the west doesn’t understand about China’s foreign policy
China’s capacity to surprise western politicians was demonstrated recently, when Chinese leader Xi Jinping was unexpectedly absent from the G20 summit. There were a few reasons why this G20 might have been less important for Xi, including the rising influence of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) partnership. (more…)
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The future will be decided by economic influence, not military dominance
America is falling into a trap. It thinks the future will be decided by military dominance, despite losing one war after another. China, on the other hand, recognises that the future will be decided by economics. (more…)
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American anxiety
Bad-tempered coverage of China continues to flourish across the entire US media. It ranges from fire-breathing to pearl-clutching. Most commentators look daggers at Beijing in a dozen different over-cooked ways – and especially at the Communist Party of China – while reminding readers and viewers of America’s continuing paramount superpower status. (more…)
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A divided US needs an ‘enemy’ like Beijing more than it ever did
When something becomes too complicated, psychologists say we go for ‘rules of thumb’. In Washington today, that rule is ‘the China threat’. (more…)
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The biggest sporting event the West has never heard of
The last week in September saw the much delayed (due to Covid) opening of the 19th Asian Games. This event which is held on a four-year cycle involves participants from 45 nations, and perhaps unsurprisingly given the enormous populations in this part of the world sees a larger number of athletes taking part than even the Olympics. (more…)
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Rethinking China and the new world order
The world is now experiencing a new era of multilateralism. The Quad (India, US, Japan, Australia) now sits alongside the G20, the G7, and has been joined by AUKUS (Australia, UK, US), and the great new vision of the Indo Pacific. BRICS, around for almost two decades, looks like it might expand to become a gathering for the newly emerging global South. That is before we take on board the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) and the collection of other acronyms that increasingly dot across the world. (more…)
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Upholding peace as China crosses the threshold of world power
Today, we live in an era of high tension between China, our largest trading partner and the US, our closest ally. We risk being goaded into war by the Australian and American hawks and their Chinese equivalents in reaction. Of seeing our sovereignty eroded and becoming the “USS Terra Australis” the largest aircraft carrier in the US Pacific Fleet. We should, therefore, do all in our power to ease conflict by strengthening all that upholds peace. (more…)
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How has the Belt and Road Initiative changed the world?
The ten years of the Belt and Road Initiative has proven that the rise of China has not brought colonialism, disaster, war, refugees, and crises. Instead, it brought the world trade, commodities, tourists, infrastructure, economic growth and civilisation. No matter how Western politicians, media, and think tanks vilify the BRI, they cannot cover up a basic fact—that is, when China is strong, it does not take the old path of aggression and expansion we see in the histories of Europe, the US, Japan, and others. (more…)