Tag: China 

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…)

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It is yet to be seen if Australia’s establishment will come to repair its diplomatic relationship with China anytime soon in order to avoid losing 39 percent of our export income and adding one million workers to the unemployment queues. (more…)

The process of conceptualising a new framework for Australian strategic policy will again be full of tension between the pulls of history and the imperatives of geography; between what is and what we would wish to be, between experience which calls for prudence in protecting the national interest and hopes, even if tentative, that a better world can be made. (more…)

I was invited to give the annual 2020 Henry Chan lecture at a time when Chinese-Australians had well and truly become objects of suspicion and distrust. I have been doing research on Chinese-language media in the Chinese diaspora for two decades.

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