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约翰·梅纳杜 https://johnmenadue.com/precis/? 约翰·梅纳杜 (John Menadue) 在媒体、公共服务和航空公司拥有高级职业生涯。 1985 年,他因公共服务而被授予澳大利亚军官勋章 (AO)。 1997年,他获得日本帝国勋章——国一藤瑞凤勋章,这是授予非国家元首或政府首脑的外国人的最高荣誉。 该奖项旨在表彰对澳大利亚与日本关系的贡献,特别是在两国之间建立工作假期计划。 2003 年,约翰因“通过公共服务领导力为澳大利亚社会做出的贡献”而被授予百年勋章。 2009 年,约翰获得阿德莱德大学杰出校友奖,以表彰他作为公务员、外交官、批判性思想家、董事会董事、顾问和公共评论员对澳大利亚社会做出的重大终身贡献。 约翰·梅纳杜 (John Menadue) 1935 年出生于南澳大利亚。1956 年毕业于阿德莱德大学,获得经济学学士学位。 1960 年至 1967 年间,他担任反对党领袖高夫·惠特拉姆 (Gough Whitlam) 的私人秘书。 随后,他进入私营部门工作了七年,担任悉尼新闻有限公司总经理、《澳大利亚人报》出版商。 约翰·梅纳杜 (John Menadue) 于 1974 年至 1976 年间担任总理和内阁部部长,密切参与了 1975 年 11 月 11 日的解职事件。他曾为总理高夫·惠特拉姆 (Gough Whitlam) 和马尔科姆·弗雷泽 (Malcolm Fraser) 工作。 1977年至1980年,他担任澳大利亚驻日本大使。 约翰于 1980 年返回澳大利亚,担任移民和民族事务部部长,与马尔科姆·弗雷泽 (Malcolm Fraser) 和伊恩·麦克菲 (Ian Macphee) 一起积极参与在澳大利亚安置大量印支难民的工作。 1983年12月,他被任命为贸易部部长。 1986 年至 1989 年间,约翰担任澳洲航空首席执行官。 后来,约翰于 1994 年 12 月至 1996 年 10 月担任 Telstra 董事,并于 1991 年至 1998 年担任澳大利亚日本基金会主席。 他担任新南威尔士州卫生委员会主席,该委员会于 2000 年 3 月向新南威尔士州卫生部长报告新南威尔士州卫生服务的变化。 他还主持了南澳世代健康审查,该审查于 2003 年 5 月向南澳公共服务部部长报告。 约翰多年来一直主持筹款活动,并在马修旅馆为无家可归者提供志愿服务。 作为悉尼寻求庇护者中心的赞助人,他积极倡导难民。 约翰于 2013 年 1 月在 johnmenadue.com 推出了他颇具影响力的公共政策期刊《Pearls and Irritations》。目前订阅者已超过 22,000 名。 约翰与辛西娅的第一次婚姻育有四个孩子和一个养女。 1986 年,他与苏西结婚,苏西育有两个孩子。他们共有 15 个孙子和 5 个曾孙。 1999年10月,约翰出版了他的自传《一路走来学到的东西》。 John Menadue https://johnmenadue.com/precis/? John Menadue has had a senior professional career in the media, public service and airlines. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1985 for public service. In 1997, he received the Japanese Imperial Award, The Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure (Kun-itto Zuiho-sho), the highest honour awarded to foreigners who are not head of state or head of government. The award was for services to the Australia-Japan relationship, particularly the establishment of the working holiday program between the two countries. In 2003, John was awarded the Centenary Medal ‘for service to Australian society through public service leadership’. In 2009, John received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Adelaide in recognition of his significant and lifelong contribution to Australian society as a Public Servant, Diplomat, Critical Thinker, Board Director, Advisor and Public Commentator. John Menadue was born in South Australia in 1935. He graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1956 as a Bachelor of Economics. From 1960 to 1967 he was Private Secretary to Gough Whitlam, Leader of the Opposition. He then moved into the private sector for seven years as General Manager, News Limited, Sydney, publisher of ‘The Australian’. John Menadue was head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet from 1974 to 1976 and closely involved in the dismissal events of November 11, 1975. He worked for Prime Ministers Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. From 1977-1980 he was Australian Ambassador to Japan. John returned to Australia in 1980 to take up the position of Head, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs where he was active with Malcolm Fraser and Ian Macphee in the settlement of large numbers of Indo Chinese refugees in Australia. He was appointed Head of the Department of Trade in December 1983. From 1986-1989 John was Chief Executive Officer of Qantas. Later John was a Director of Telstra from December 1994 to October 1996 and Chairman of the Australia Japan Foundation from 1991 to 1998. He chaired the NSW Health Council which reported to the NSW Minister for Health in March 2000 on changes to health services in NSW. He also chaired the SA Generational Health Review which reported to the SA Minister for Human Services in May 2003. John chaired fundraising and volunteered for many years at the Matthew Hostel for homeless men. As a Patron of the Asylum Seekers’ Centre in Sydney, he is active in refugee advocacy. John launched his influential public policy journal Pearls and Irritations at johnmenadue.com in January 2013. There are now more than 22,000 subscribers. John has four children and a foster daughter from his first marriage to Cynthia. He married Susie, who has two children, in 1986. Together they have fifteen grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. In October 1999, John published his autobiography ‘Things you learn along the way’. Articles about China https://johnmenadue.com/category/foreign-affairs/china/page/2/? -
Saul Eslake, the renowned and independent economist, has updated his China chart pack which was last prepared in January 2023. The chart pack gives a bird’s eye view of the economic challenges China needs to address. By using the term ‘Peak China’, he does not mean that China will collapse, but that its future economic -
Andrew Hastie and Tony Abbott are trying to install a candidate in WA who has written a fictional book to scare people about a Chinese invasion of Australia. -
The CEO of BYD, the Chinese giant challenging Tesla as the world’s biggest electric vehicle maker, says sales of New Energy Vehicles (NEVs), including battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), will make up more than half of all new cars sold in China within the next three months. -
Penny Wong has a new mantra for Australia China relations. -
Australia is trailing its neighbours in the race to acquire China knowledge and capability, which can only come from in-country experience, writes Louise Edwards. -
TikTok’s owner is once again navigating troubled waters in the United States, where the US House of Representatives has issued an ultimatum: divest or face shutdown within six months. -
Beijing has been slow to address the visa and e-payment woes of foreign travellers, and some officials remain complacent about the exodus of foreign investment. -
We shall never get anywhere with the Australia-China relationship if we are not pragmatic, as Bismarck famously said. While we must avoid over-ambitious goals, forthcoming official talks with China’s top foreign affairs official Wang Yi will present a unique opportunity to test the government’s relationship reset. -
In recent years, there has been a notable shift among certain Western politicians, media outlets and think tanks regarding their perspective on China’s developmental trajectory. The once popular theory of an imminent collapse of China, famously asserted by Gordon G. Chang over two decades ago, has finally begun to lose traction. -
The Economist, a leading British weekly, enjoys wide global readership. It recently covered the thoughts and written work of two scholars, both Chinese, one now government-based, in Beijing and the other based in an academic institution in the US. Only the former, was branded as an “ideologue” however. Paraphrasing Professor Julius Sumner Miller: Why is -
As 2024 marks the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac, whether this mythical creature should be named “Dragon” or “Loong” in English has puzzled many and stirred heated discussions. -
An interesting essay that takes a critical but well-informed look at the development of China’s Middle East policy-settings recently appeared in the journal Foreign Policy. You can read the article – written by Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Washington-based Stimson Centre. -
Recently there was an interesting piece in the South China Morning Post on “Communist Party orders cells to study Xi Jinping Thought and learn speeches” See China’s Communist Party orders cells to make Xi Jinping Thought a priority, cadres must study president’s speeches, South China Morning Post. -
Some of my best friends are Chinese. This is entirely unsurprising given my frequent visits to the PRC, the Chinese students I have supervised and the colleagues I have collaborated with over the years. I used to think such relationships were unambiguously a good thing and the possible basis for a better understanding between our -
Days before the International Court of Justice’s initial ruling late last month that found there was a plausible risk of genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza, the United Nations Human Rights Council conducted its “universal periodic review” of China’s human rights record. -
The South China Morning Post recently published an illuminating article on China’s policy towards ethnic minorities, with a particular focus on Inner Mongolia that has strived hardest to assimilate its Mongols with the rest of the Chinese population to promote a single national identity. But does China’s policy reflect the assimilation policies towards First Nations -
Mr. Liu Dafeng has been a fan of overseas travel. He lives in China’s Shenzhen city, southeastern Guangdong province. After weeks of preparation and paperwork, his plan of a long-awaited trip to Britain was shattered after his visa application was denied. -
Recently the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a thinktank in Washington, DC, did a survey asking U.S. and Taiwan Experts if China might use nuclear weapons in a conflict with or over Taiwan. The results were astonishing to most who read the study. Almost half of U.S. experts reported they thought China would. Only -
Agathe Demarais is a senior policy fellow on geoeconomics at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a Foreign Policy columnist. She recently argued in that journal (with a clear anti-Trump tilt)-that “China is Rooting for Trump” -
An undutiful daughter’s atonement trip after four years. -
There was a time when the world looked to China to reduce its emissions. China was, they quite rightly pointed out, one of the globe’s worst polluters. -
Ai Weiwei joins a long line of dissenters such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Liu Xiaobo who became disenchanted by the West. -
The Year of the Dragon is bound to be big. Among the twelve zodiac animals that mark the traditional cycle of calendar years, the dragon is the only mythical beast and the most powerful. It stands in marked contrast to the rabbit that will hand over its psychic reign on 10 February. Soothsayers may well -
As the Lunar New Year approaches, many Chinese families clean the front door of their home and hang poetry around it. This is a rich and age-old Chinese tradition, both cultural and religious. -
The diplomatic recognition of the Taliban government in Afghanistan on January 31, 2024 by China must be bracketed with two other far-reaching regional policy moves by Beijing in the post-cold war era —the Shanghai Five in 1996 — later renamed as Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in 2001— and the Belt and Road Initiative announced by President -
The Rhodium Group, an independent research organisation with a focus on China, says the nation’s economic policymaking process has stalled with it refusing to announce meaningful actions to overcome its pressing property and share market crashes let alone forge a clear path for the future. The full paper can be accessed here. -
The standard media news bite is that Yang Hengjun is a Chinese born Australian pro-democracy writer who was unlawfully detained and now jailed for life in China. But the full story is murkier than that. -
Human rights in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are under increased threat. The PRC government ignores international representations. This begs the question: should Australia even attempt to intervene? What do we risk by doing so? The easy course would be to do the minimum and restrict our representations to cases where Australian citizens and -
We need to be careful with the outrage over the sentencing of Yang Hengjun in China. -
The call issued by Bob Carr and Gareth Evans for a ‘comprehensive détente between the US and China is timely and constructive. But as with all things to do with peace and war, the issues are complex and the way forward strewn with difficulties. -
China’s economic policymaking over the past few decades is a fascinating example of adaptive planning and strategic foresight. From pivoting away from reliance on globalisation to emphasising domestic infrastructure and poverty alleviation, tilting towards the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and now focusing on “high-quality development” (simultaneously upscaling advanced manufacturing while deflating the property bubble), -
China displays more understanding than Western powers on needs of less-developed nations. -
China knows that, if it has to, it can stand alone and that it can defend itself. It knows, too, that most nations of the world, other than America (which is, despite itself, somewhat conflicted), want to do business with it; to connect with its growing confidence and with its strengthening brand of non-threatening, non-coercive, -
As a China-watching think tank winds up after Morrison-era cuts, a respected analyst reviews government funding for security-related research and education. -
The director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a lobby group for big tech and foreign agencies, claims that China’s alleged targeting of the agency “should be of concern to all Australians”. -
During its long history, Chinese dynasties were as often the victims of outside aggression as they were invaders of foreign land. -
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi recently unveiled its first electric vehicle (EV), the SU7, igniting a spark of excitement. At the launch event, Xiaomi’s founder and CEO Lei Jun, whose vision includes creating “a dream car on a par with Porsche and Tesla,” said that from design to batteries, intelligent driving to cockpit controls, the SU7 -
Manifest Destiny, now more commonly called American Exceptionalism is a traditional and widespread view in the US. American views of its relationship with the world vary from isolationism to leadership, but the underlying base is always that the US is something special. While some may be more subtle than others, how many Americans could accept -
Disgraceful gaps have emerged in our knowledge and understanding of Asian countries. This capability is essential to successful navigation of the future, as Peter Varghese and Joseph Lo Bianco have noted. -
Despite challenges, including the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and structural concerns, voices from within the business community underscore a robust economic outlook. -
Ian Bremner argues convincingly that the American Dollar remains embedded as the global reserve currency since: “you can’t replace something with nothing”. Nevertheless, intensifying US misuse and abuse of the dollar’s standing has expanded the worldwide search for one or more “alternative somethings”. Now an intriguing argument has been advanced that a central reason Western -
The UN Human Rights Report of August 31, 2022 says what’s happening in Xinjiang constitutes “crimes against humanity”. In plain English, this is saying it is not genocide under the UN Genocide Convention. It confirms an earlier Amnesty International report in 2021 to the same effect. Both are clear implicit rejections of unsubstantiated genocide claims. -
Janet Yellen came, she pontificated and postulated, ate some nice Chinese food, drank a beer with Nicholas Burns, a man that Chinese people loathe and hold little respect for; then she left. This tells the world all about her trip, what she ate and drank was more important than what she said and did. -
There is no risk of China’s property sector woes spreading into a financial crisis but there is a policy-induced housing crisis and restrictions must be further eased. The property market must be stabilised to restore public confidence and spur private consumption, so economic growth can reaccelerate. -
The US State Department’s No 2 now admits the AUKUS joint submarine project between three of the Five Eyes is tied to Taiwan and mainland China. -
The Western press is filled with stories of foreboding about the Chinese economy. We are told regularly that China’s fast growth is over, that China’s data are manipulated, that a Chinese financial crisis looms, and that China will suffer the same stagnation as Japan during the past quarter century. This is U.S. propaganda, not reality. -
I read Professor Percy Allen’s interesting article (P&I, 28/03/24) and was astounded by the claim based on a list of “invasion” he was given that China was historically an imperial nation and thus dangerous. -
This former leader of PNG’s state energy supplier says we should take a leaf from the China playbook by using a “tied aid” model. -
There is now a policy dispute about the roles of nuclear and renewable energy in future Australian low emission energy systems. The experience of China over more than a decade provides compelling evidence on how this debate will be resolved. In December 2011 China’s National Energy Administration announced that China would make nuclear energy the -
CGTN Radio host Liu Kun interviews Ambassador Tony Kevin, Ambassador Geoff Raby and Dr. Zhao Hai on Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent trip to Australia and broader China-Australia relations. -
On March 19, the Hong Kong legislature passed the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance and reached a historic milestone in the implementation of “one country, two systems”. Legislation to implement Article 23, which requires Hong Kong to legislate on its own to prohibit seven national security offences, has been outstanding since 1997, and the inadequacy of -
Archishman Raju is a scientist based in Bengaluru, India. He is associated with the Gandhi Global Family and the Inter civilisational Dialogue Project who are commemorating 100 years of Tagore’s trip to China in several cities in India. -
Top spy agency urges Chinese citizens to step up cybersecurity as attacks by overseas agencies have been ‘rampant’ in recent years. The message comes as Beijing broadens scope of anti-espionage law to cover online attacks and prepares to expand penalties for data violations. -
Paul Keating’s report on his meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi brought back memories of an hour long one on one conversation I had with Jiang Zemin, who in 1987 brought a trade mission to Sydney. He was the Mayor of Shanghai at the time. -
I was recently sent a complete list of China’s invasions of other countries in the last 2,245 years to demonstrated that China is historically an imperial nation and hence dangerous. -
“The climate crisis is too urgent for the U.S. or any country to allow outdated trade rules… to distract us from enacting bold climate policies,” argued one campaigner. -
“Happy to have engaged in a provocative yet always civil dialogue with the famous China expert Orville Schell at the Asia Society in New York on Thursday, 21st March. Hope you will enjoy it too.” -
When Canberra told us we had to join the US in its cruel attempt to prevent a Vietnamese peasant army from overthrowing a US-armed Saigon government, some of us thought the politicians were plain stupid. -
For China these days it doesn’t get much easier to pursue it geostrategic objectives. With the US distracted on two fronts in Europe and the Middle East, and Russia mired in its intractable invasion of Ukraine, among the great powers, China is largely free to advance its interests on an increasingly global scale. Sabre rattling -
US lawmakers have introduced a bill that would bar US mutual funds from investing in indexes that track Chinese stocks (Bloomberg). According to Bloomberg “The legislation targets mutual funds that invest in indexes tracking primarily Chinese stocks, rather than those investing in indexes that only include some Chinese companies, according to Sherman’s office. However, the China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI) operates on a huge scale and is the focus of rarely halted negative coverage across many prominent outlets in the Global West. A new extended article in the leading US journal, Foreign Policy, however, provides a measured, informed exception to this general rule. There is clear evidence that US efforts to build a coalition of allies in our region is directed at containing Chinese power and developing the capability to eventually confront the Chinese military. That scenario is a nightmare for Australia. We now find certain elements of a Labor government flirting with containment and confrontation with China Let’s not reject forty years of cooperation and exchange with China. Australia has greatly benefitted from trade, investment, cultural exchange and collaboration over these decades. Now, as the United States and Europe threaten to raise tariffs, erect barriers to exchanges and prioritise security concerns, it is time to remember when we espoused multilateralism and openness. Regularly, Western media claims that China’s run is near an end and that collapse is just around the corner. So constant has this become, it is like a broken gramophone record. Recently predictions of this collapse have been couched around the indebtedness of some major players in the Chinese property market. The ‘inevitable collapse’, however, Late last year, a colleague sent me a letter decrying some of my writings about China, notably the last newsletter of 2023. This newsletter is my response to him. America insists on treating China as an economic threat, but the reality is that China’s economic advancement has benefited us all. Instead, the stagnation of wages and manufacturing job losses experienced by Trump supporters in the US largely reflects the impact of technological change. In the increasingly geopolitically charged waters of international trade and investment, Chinese technology enterprises are navigating a particularly turbulent current in Australia. The growing scepticism and regulatory scrutiny they face reflect a techno-geopolitical uncertainty, with Australia caught between its economic interdependence with China and strategic alignment with the United States. “I hope to get a Chinese passport and become a Chinese citizen,” a Taiwanese student of mine once told me. “Only by being Chinese can we have confidence and become the most powerful country in the world. If we remain only Taiwanese, we are but a mere vassal of the United States,” he said with China looms large in the Australian psyche. On a practical level, what happens in China largely determines the success of global action to deal with climate change, the profitability of our rural economy and the financing of our universities. Our national leaders are concerned about rising tensions in our region and the interplay of US-China 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. (A repost from October 2023). A major problem for a settler society like Australia is to reconcile our history and our geography. In the last 10 years we’ve lost ground in reconciling the two. From China’s perspective, Australia will always follow the US no matter what. And the US is out to contain China – there is nothing that China could do to change that. Australia has made relatively little effort to change this perception. This means for China, there is little point in putting much effort into dealing By going beyond the good and evil binary, the Australian media could play a more constructive role in fostering enduring stability between Australia and China, delineating a path that maintains Australia’s safety and integrity. Henry Kissinger’s role in expediting the Sino-US normalization and recognition process represented one of the greatest feats in modern diplomatic history. For the sake of Australia’s national interest, and for journalistic integrity that will be judged by history, can mainstream media maintain independence from short-term, vulgar political and geopolitical influence and interference, especially with regard to reporting about China? The failure of the latest round of government-funded research grants to include any topics related to China weakens Australia’s capacity to understand and manage relations with the region’s biggest power, writes Louise Edwards. Entrepreneurs occupy a pivotal role in bridging the gap between Australia and China, especially when it comes to climate collaboration. China’s economy today is around 50 times larger, in real terms, than it was 50 years ago. A World Bank report in 2022 confirmed that during this period, China lifted at least 800 million people out of extreme poverty, contributing close to 75% of the total reduction in extreme poverty, globally. In order to understand what is happening in China now and predict what may happen over the following years we must draw on Chinese history and philosophy to guide us. Relying on the western experience to guide our thinking about China may be more comforting and accessible but it leaves us in a very poor With the expansion of all services of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – no matter that it is consistent with a defensive posture – China’s every strategic move now is rendered totally unacceptable after passing through a prism designed and issued on a complementary basis by the US. Hyper-suspicion is the attitude and threat inflation Andy Park, the host of Drive on ABC Radio National, asked one of his guests the following question about Albanese’s visit to China: ‘Scoring an invitation to go to Beijing is obviously a coup for Mr Albanese. Obviously, much was said and done under the table diplomatically speaking. … Do you think the average Australian Once again Biden confirms he’s not the intellect he once was. People will remember years ago when Biden was a smart, intelligent and incisive man. He was always easy to disagree with but never easy to dismiss. Now, there is a serious danger whenever he goes off-script. As he left a meeting with Xi Jinping, China is very important for Australia. The recent Prime Ministerial visit to Beijing, the first in seven years, underscores that. The fundamental question we need to ask ourselves across all the various sectors of Australia’s multi-faceted China-interested community is, are we getting China right? Do we know as much as we think we know? If There are 21 countries attending APEC and over 1,200 organisations from within those countries. Only one of the 21 countries, which happens to be the host, has a recent history of promoting de-coupling, or de-risking which is diametrically opposed to what APEC stands for; they seem to forget that the C means cooperation. We need a better understanding of the complexities of Chinese politics – treating it like a ‘Black Box’ will leave us poorly equipped for a world where China is the other superpower, writes Louise Edwards. After a one week China tour organised by some Chinese entrepreneurs to mark the anniversary of the 1971 pingpong diplomacy which opened China to the outside world, two firm impressions remain. One is the extraordinary pace and dynamism of the economic, and social, progress. The other is the political stagnation, with our guides still clinging It was only in March this year that The Sydney Morning Herald claimed in a series called Red Alert that Australia “faces the real prospect of war with China within three years that could involve a direct attack on our mainland”. There were no grounds to believe this then and even fewer after Anthony Albanese’s While the US and its allies prioritise reducing supply chain risks, reshuffling away from China, repercussions from decoupling or de-risking might pose greater concerns than the risks themselves. Such actions could bifurcate the global economy, leading to fragmented supply chains and divergent technology standards. This could hinder global economic recovery, dampen investment flows, and impede While Australia’s formal sovereignty resides with the British monarch as part of the Commonwealth, its real sovereignty is to be found somewhere in Washington. We should be greatly encouraged by Prime Minister Albanese’s visit to China. Isolation is always a bad thing. Dialogue is essential for relationships to be sustained or nourished. This is the most important aspect of the visit, far outweighing in importance any specific outcome. Fifty years’ ago, the grainy black and white image of Whitlam with his ear pressed against the listening wall at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, led to the joke: What is being said to Gough? Answer: ‘Mei you!’ The ubiquities response then by Chinese service staff in restaurants and stores in those day, loosely, ‘don’t have “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. 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. 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. 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? 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 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. 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 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 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. It is a serious mistake to underestimate the strength and capacity of China’s commitment to its green new dream. 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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”. Can Australia reconcile the American and Chinese strands of its foreign policy? 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. When something becomes too complicated, psychologists say we go for ‘rules of thumb’. In Washington today, that rule is ‘the China threat’. 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 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 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 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 International law of the sea is set to be subverted as America seeks to exercise extraterritorial defence claims over foreign exclusive economic zones beyond those of three Pacific island states. Besides settling and securing its borders, China has no claims on other nations. Countries with grandiose territorial ambitions make no secret of them. This second article in a three-part series explores why China is not planning to conquer and occupy any other nation. After three years’ pause, the Australia-China High-Level Dialogue held its 7th meeting in Beijing on 7 September. This continues the process of stabilisation in bilateral relations since the Albanese government came to power 16 months ago. A closed-door meeting where no extensive media coverage was possible, it was nonetheless understood that the two sides considered Hatred of China is now the single issue that unites Democrats and Republicans. Having a perceived foe helps unite a deeply divided America internally, unless, of course, it becomes a losing cause. This three-part series explores how US narratives on the ‘China threat’ have become entrenched in the West, and why China is not a For the past one month or so, my wife has been on a self-guided tour of Europe, visiting friends and scenic spots. She told me on the phone recently that she could not help but argue with her friends and new acquaintances when they tried to convince her that China would “collapse” in two to The Australian Government has a big problem with its security narrative. Preparing for a putative war with China is the nation’s top security priority, while the government’s knowledge of the growing existential threat of climate disruption and their security consequences remains a closely-guarded secret. Australia’s existing relationships and collaborations with China give Australian Industry and consumers a head start in the cost-effective use of some of the most important technologies of the future, including those vital to achieving net zero emissions. Most countries would give anything to be at the forefront of such developments, but Australian University researchers are Strategic ambiguity is the greatest oral weapon of mass destruction that the Western world has ever invented. According to independent observers who visited the region, Beijing has implemented policies to help Uygurs after crushing terrorist threat. The fact is that between 2010 and 2016, Xinjiang was on the brink of chaos. Unlike America’s war on terror, characterised by US troops invading the wrong countries, destroying infrastructure, pillaging resources, terrorizing locals and conducting drone strikes that killed civilians and journalists, as Julian Assange valiantly exposed on WikiLeaks, China’s approach to counter terrorist China wants to expand its sphere of influence; the West, thankfully, is devoid of such base instincts. How ironic that mainstream newspapers and conservative commentators should lambast former prime minister Paul Keating for living in the past when he denounced the AUKUS agreement and the Labor government’s fulsome support of it. It was, of course, the AUKUS agreement itself, entered into by Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden in 2022, that The China threat has much more to do with the insecurity and indecision of the West towards the country, the emerging multipolar world and the erosion of Western dominance. In previous articles, I’ve articulated why I adopted a skeptical and analytical mindset from a young age, particularly in the realm of geopolitical claims made by nation-states in the nuclear age. Now, let’s shift our focus to China’s nuclear strategy. The real American terror is not that the Chinese economy will grow bigger than the American economy – if it is not already – but that the Chinese mixed economy model will prove superior to the rampant free-market, greed model US billionaires and their peddlers promote. I chanced upon an article written by Peter Hartcher in The Age today (12/09/2023) and was astounded by how puerile the present mainstream media can be. The moon waxes and wanes, the tide ebbs and flows, empires come and go but some empires come more than once. This is, once again, China’s time. While there have been moves to prevent this from occurring, one recent event proves they are unsuccessful. Empires are anxious creatures, run by those predatory types with egos vast and awareness minimal. The awareness only gets pricked when risks are posed to the financial returns, military security, what might be called, at a stretch, their way of living. Such risks can come in many forms, and for the US imperium, it’s less That Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese chose to confirm his visit to China almost two months in advance after his “frank and constructive” meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Jakarta last week shows his earnestness to further improve Sino-Australian relations. At a political fundraiser in Utah on 10 August, U.S. President Joe Biden described China’s economy as a “ticking time bomb”, adding that “That’s not good because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things”. It’s not only an unusually undiplomatic comment, but an unfair one that borders on the ridiculous. Australia has no business playing the victim when the lines between strategy and economic interests have become increasingly blurred. China’s president has stressed the great value of strong China-US contacts at grassroots level. Australian entrepreneurs and investors are already looking to the new developments in our region for inspirations and opportunities. They might look no further than China. China looms large in the Australian psyche. On a practical level, what happens in China largely determines the success of global action to deal with climate change, the profitability of our rural economy and the financing of our universities. Our national leaders are concerned about rising tensions in our region and the interplay of US-China Instead of simply aligning their interests with the US, it is critical for US allies such as Australia to find a new balance in the great power rivalry between Washington and Beijing, and to develop their own strategic approach toward China. Among other things, this will require an understanding of how policy is formulated behind All of us here can probably agree that we are currently living in a time of greater strategic uncertainty and challenge than at any time since the end of World War II, and certainly since the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s. China is seen as being at the epicentre of this. There’s a lot of controversy over what China is doing in the South China Sea, but there seems to be very little in the way of perspective. The recent “water attack” on Philippines vessels was not a hostile act by a military nation, it was a Chinese Coastguard ship deterring another nation from building on “What will Australia do in the event of a US-PRC war over Taiwan?” is now a question that must be openly and deliberately addressed. Across nine presidential administrations, “strategic ambiguity” promoted regional stability. The flip-flops of the current Biden Administration have cast doubt on the efficacy of “strategic ambiguity”, as the means of deterring war The Australian economy is increasingly becoming a war economy. The PM talks of the economic benefits of weapons manufacture, and of how the military and a growing military-industrial-complex is almost a job creation scheme. The media works diligently to build and sustain a sense of fear. But even so, the warmongers of the Australian Strategic The West’s decline is no triumph, but nor is it a tragedy. It’s just the latest reminder that all organising systems, even empires, are transient, that success always brings complacency, but that the best of human civilisation is renewed and transformed even as the old order fades away. Few nation-states have been shaped by their underlying physical geography and location in the world quite as much as Australia. The Biden Administration is implementing a plan to draw Taiwan into a direct military confrontation with the People’s Republic of China. Whether Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will visit China in 2023 remains uncertain, but the odds are favourable. Beijing has issued an invitation and Albanese said that the trip remains ‘likely’. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has confirmed that Canberra ‘would look to make sure that a visit can occur’. But there remain two factors that might derail a visit. Views of China – and its soft power – are more positive in middle-income countries. Based on its review of “the changes in the Chinese barley market” that it started in April this year, the Commerce Ministry on Saturday lifted the anti-dumping and countervailing duties it levied on imported Australian barley from May 2020. It’s hard to credit, but the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) continues its incessant grumbling about forms of interference across a number of areas of Australian political and economic debate. What stands out in this method of noisy declaration is the tactic of sidelining legitimate public debate. Such interference supposedly impairs the credibility of the After a rather extraordinary month of steadily escalating defence PR and conspiracy opportunities, Australia was sat on its backside over the weekend and reminded to know its subservient place. My fear is not that AUKUS SSNs, if they arrive, will be late, ineffective, and obsolete. My fear is that they will arrive and will be effective and even lethal. Because, if that is the case, they will play a part in the drive to a potentially devastating war with China that would be a The Chinese Communist Party has a history of turning to senior figures to steady the ship in emergencies and Wang’s return may be in line with this precedent. Beijing will need someone to prepare the ground for some major diplomatic setpieces including a possible trip to the US by President Xi Jinping. Qin’s replacement has been named, ending weeks of speculation, but it’s still not clear what prompted the former foreign minister’s removal. Wang’s appointment makes him the most powerful person to hold the position in decades. China is eschewing the former European Central Bank chief’s pledge to ‘do whatever it takes’ to stabilise via monetary easing. Since the Lowy Institute’s first Being Chinese in Australia: Public Opinion in Chinese Communities survey was published in 2021, Australia’s relations with China have undergone significant upheaval. The COVID-19 pandemic, the rupture in Australia–China relations, the election of a Labor government and the turbulence in both countries accompanying their re-openings after their COVID-19 lockdowns has placed Chinese The United States left Afghanistan in a state of dangerous and monumental disorder in 2021. Soon after, it made matters still worse by confiscating the meagre foreign exchange reserves of one of the world’s most deprived countries — shamelessly claiming that it was advancing certain human rights while doing so. It isn’t something we expect from an august body that forms part of the United Nations but, according to CO-WEST-PRO Consultancy’s recently released fourth paper, the report issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on alleged atrocities in Xinjiang is “of substandard quality and is not a reliable source for An EU paper explains how traditional Western allies on the continent are being turned into vassal states of the US as part of Washington’s strategy to contain the rise of China. On China, Biden is faced with both a political problem, represented by his secretary of state, and an economic reality, represented by the Treasury secretary. Yellen’s visit suggests economics may be starting to play a larger role in the bilateral relationship, but the US will need to demonstrate consistent sincerity to see improvement in ties. India has an economy that is growing faster than China’s – six per cent versus four per cent – and it has a population that is expanding while that of its Asian neighbour is shrinking. The recent visit to China by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken seemed promising, until we learned what he really had in mind: a long war with no finish line. Despite the great interest in and importance of US Secretary of State Blinken’s visit to China, there have been far more interesting things happening here for China watchers. They illustrate the continuing shift in geopolitical gravity towards China as the centre of the multipolar world. I was rather amused, or to use the American expression “tickled pink”, when I read the article titled “Coexistance: the only realist path to peace” by Stephen M. Walt in Pearls & Irritations. The article’s claim to the “realist path” to peace would make sense only to those who have dominated others for so long Just released vehicle export figures for the first five months of 2023 indicated that China would be the world’s largest vehicle exporter in 2023. The statistical evidence clearly shows that China is the world’s number one economy. Unfortunately, the US and many commentators are unwilling to acknowledge that reality, but the future stability of the region depends on acceptance that we are living in a multipolar world. Misunderstanding China has a long and distinguished history. Much of that misunderstanding has been generated by western media going right back to the Qing dynasty. A Lowy Institute survey issued in April this year showed that the balance of Chinese-American influence in Southeast Asia had shifted in China’s favour over the last few years. Specifically, in overall diplomatic, defence, economic and cultural influence, the balance was 52 to 48 in China’s favour in 2018 but its lead increased to 54 Is it not a great irony that the Chinese are now more supportive of the post-war Bretton Woods system than the Americans? “This nation, after three thousand years of grandeur and decay… exhibits today all the physical and mental vitality that we find in its most creative periods… Very probably such wealth will be produced in China [by 2030] as even America has never known and once again, as so often in the past, China will lead Shangri-La Dialogue was a missed opportunity for talks as defence chiefs Austin and Marles insisted on belligerence and doublespeak. Many of the G7’s hopes and wants for the world appear to have been lifted directly from official documents of the Communist Party of China (CPC). There’s no real benefit to debating whether the G7 is copying the CPC’s policy program, although it smells of plagiarism. China is pleased that more countries are willing to Every word of Anthony Albanese’s address to the Shangri-La dialogue on 2 June was chosen with care. It was a balancing act, with the Prime Minister poised between peace and war, defence and diplomacy, the US and China, in a high-wire performance his Coalition predecessors wouldn’t have attempted. The myth of the “Tiananmen Square massacre” is arguably the most successful disinformation campaign of modern times, according to western and eastern sources—so much so that proud psychological warfare specialists recently used it to ADVERTISE their news manipulation skills. We’ll get to that below. The Chinese character for China, denotes China as the middle kingdom and understandably so: The recent ‘Red Alert’ series, along with statements by some U.S, and Australian military leaders would have us believe that Chinese military forces could soon in waves be running up Bondi Beach invading our erstwhile peaceful land. Strange then, given this immediacy of threat, our military preparations are increasingly linked to AUKUS, its central plank Military attaches from the United States and Australia were among the dozens invited to tour the People’s Liberation Army’s garrison in Beijing last week, the first event of its kind since the pandemic. The event signals willingness in China for exchanges with Western forces, observers say. There are two major dimensions to the US/China strategic competition. One is ideology; the other is economics. Who will eventually win depends on who has a better combination of the two; discounting a war in which all will lose. A photo Beijing released on March 6th of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s foreign minister Wang Yi delivered a seismic shock in Washington. There he was, standing between Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, and Saudi National Security Adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban. They were awkwardly shaking hands on an agreement to reestablish 60 Minutes Australia has been playing a leading role in saturating Australian airwaves with consent-manufacturing messaging in support of militarising to participate in a US war against China. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” The pithy words spoken by US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 has been said to be his ideal policy for the US. But in recent years, the “big stick” diplomacy has proven to be too simplistic for the world they used to dominate. There is a sharp contradiction at the heart of the Albanese government’s attempt to stabilise trade with China, whilst at the same time preparing for war with China in support of the United States. It’d be fair to say that there are two competing entities on the world stage right now. One composed of the G7, and the other a less structured group of countries that were once exploited by the G7. In recent years, to contain and isolate China, the United States has repeatedly accused China of continuously ignoring, abusing, distorting, undermining, or violating the rules and institutions of the “rules-based” “liberal international order” (LIO). This time over possible Chinese naval bases in the South Pacific. Alexander Csergo, accused of ‘reckless foreign interference’, is being held in a top-security jail cell in Australia. His case is a ‘show trial’, his lawyer says, which reflects ‘an absolute hypocrisy in our approach to doing business with China’. No jurisdiction has managed a flawless COVID response, says Richard Cullen. But China, despite its imperfect COVID management experience, did better than any other major jurisdiction and, in fact, displayed many examples of early-best-practice unseen elsewhere. Exasperatingly, the West found, yet again, that it there is much it can learn from China – and then, The increasing militarisation of the South China Sea disputes sets the stage for the worst case scenario—frequent and widespread conflict that eventually results in a military confrontation between China and the US. To avoid this scenario, the reality is that China, its rival claimants and the U.S. have to compromise. OECD data shows China sustains net gain of scientists while US suffers net loss as ethnic Chinese researchers fear US government surveillance and prosecution. The Saudi-Iranian normalisation deal brokered by China has sent shockwaves throughout the region. Regional actors had not expected China to suddenly desire a political role in the Persian Gulf. Others were skeptical of Beijing’s diplomatic capacity and skills. Few, however, were as surprised as foreign policy hands in Washington – even though it is the When the western media and politicians speak of China’s treatment of minorities it is always taken for granted that such treatment is a violation of the minority’s human rights. I would venture to differ. China has a complex framework of ethnic-regional autonomy enshrined in its constitution that is poorly understood in the West. Having worked The 2023 Defence Strategic Review has recommended Australia adopt a new strategic conceptual framework dubbed ‘National Defence’ that incorporates a ‘strategy of denial’. This approach is tied to a broader concept of ‘collective security’ in the Indo-Pacific and is aligned with America’s framework for ‘integrated deterrence’ of China. ‘National Defence’ is consistent with American force The US has been increasingly treating Taiwan like a sovereign nation with whom diplomatic relationships and alliances can be formed, in violation of its longstanding One-China policy that has kept the peace for decades. And I just think it’s worth noting that the western media who’ve lately been condoning these moves became outraged at Donald Tianxia, ‘under Heaven’, is a concept deriving from ancient China, but undergoing numerous interpretations over the ages. It refers to an idealised territorial/moral world order, equal but harmonious. This week the Federal ALP Government announced a significant cutback in the number of tanks to be stationed in the north to repel whatever is expected to land there to take our beautiful country away from us. Why – because tanks just won’t do the job in future. Recently, the former senior Singaporean diplomat and respected geopolitical consultant Kishore Mahbubani offered Australia some acute advice: Stop betting on the past. Mahbubani’s article was figuratively bookended with visits to Beijing by President Emmanuel Macron of France (shortly before publication) and President Lula da Silva of Brazil (soon after publication). Breakthroughs set to make a big difference in energy sector The Albanese government’s Defence Strategic Review is marred from the outset by its bald assertion that China’s military build-up is the largest and most ambitious of any country since the end of the Second World War. This is a historic watershed that the world is living through right now. What China is after is true multilateralism. What’s very important to understand is that most of the world also does not want the U.S. as the global preeminent power. Most of the world wants a truly multipolar world, and is, therefore, not An invitation to visit Beijing was issued late last year to Stephen Chow, Sau-yan, the Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong. His recently completed visit is the first by a Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong to the Mainland since the recovery of Hong Kong by China in July, 1997. It may help provide a strengthened framework The deficiency of Australia’s Asia literacy — and as a subset, China literacy — has been recognised for decades by successive federal governments. Despite government investments to boost Asia literacy, the result has been dismal. On May 3, 2021, when the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was interviewed by 60 Minutes, he said, “Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold the rules-based order that China is posing a threat to.” In the Csergo case the big question is: does the prosecution have any evidence of a real crime and not just a breach of the ridiculous Reckless Foreign Interference law? |
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