China

Trust between Australia and China is at a nadir. Little more than a year ago, the prospects for positive long-term engagement remained strong – not just for business ties, but also for that most peculiarly Australian game. AFL club Port Adelaide had taken Australian football to Shanghai for the

The latest complaints from China against Australia, neatly bundled into a series of 14 perceived disputes, makes painfully clear how ties between the two countries are straining. Yet Australia is not the only country to have felt the wrath of China’s coercive diplomacy.

A man who has earned a reputation for compromise and dealmaking over his half-century in Washington, Joe Biden has also won the presidency by presenting himself as a national unifier, while simultaneously putting forward a policy agenda that some consider to be the most progressive in American

Australia and the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) stand as critical security partners with the United States, and have supported the open, rules-based international order for well over half a century. Both have shed blood in this mission, standing with the US in every war since the Korean war

On 13 November, the finance ministers and central bankers of the G20 will hold an extraordinary meeting to discuss action to help poor countries struggling to pay debts. A key issue will be getting China, the world’s largest bilateral creditor, to play a more active role. The push by China’s&

On 29 October, at the Fifth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the year 2027 was mentioned for the first time in the same breath as army building and modernisation. Some foreign media interpreted this as Beijing’s announcement that the goal for the People’s

Book Review: Geoff Raby, China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order (Melbourne University Press, 2020) Since the middle of the 19th century, four periods in Australian history have been marked by intense antagonism towards China: the gold rushes of the 1850s; the

The Chinese government has officially encouraged women to have equal roles in social, economic and political life. Still, traditional culture and practice continue to subject women to lower social status inside families (especially in rural areas), in the media, and in employment, including in the

Australia is creating its own “China problem” by not adequately funding research, cultural and language training, and by not taking seriously the national security implications of underfunding support for international students. Research collaborations have been under the spotlight, with

“China would be welcomed as an arbitrator in negotiations [for peace in Afghanistan] and should not leave matters of such a great importance solely to the US.” So said Maulana Samiul Haq, the so-called “Father of the Taliban”, in 2018. Peace talks between the Afghan government and the

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade describes Australia and New Zealand as “natural allies with a strong trans-Tasman sense of family”. New Zealand claims it has “no better friend than Australia”. But differing approaches to their relations with China have been a point of divergence

Recently in a tweet, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi complained that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “has destroyed the web of relationships that the Congress built and nurtured over several decades”. He then added rather vaguely that “living in a neighbourhood with no friends is dangerous

In 2009 China was blamed for destroying the Copenhagen conference on climate change, leaving the world with no successor to the Kyoto Protocol. In 2015, along with France and the United States, its leadership helped make the Paris Agreement a reality. And in 2020, China is the first major greenhouse

Australian commentators often appear eager to paint Australia’s China choices in stark binaries. “The money or our sovereignty: China leaves us no choice” is one representative headline. Continued bilateral escalation could prove them right. But both states have an interest in trying to get

There is no end in sight for the ongoing China-India border crisis. In June, China and India’s border dispute along the LAC (Line of Actual Control) resumed after a decades-long halt to the fighting, with the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of casualties on the Chinese side

On 17 September, the Information of Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China released a White Paper, “Employment and Labour Rights in Xinjiang”, detailing the Chinese Communist Party’s “proactive employment policies” in the region. The paper is clearly part of China

What should have been a family favourite film has turned into a political nightmare, with moviegoers around the world urged to boycott the new Disney film Mulan due to its links with the Chinese Communist Party.  Calls to

Against the fear and distrust that increasingly characterise Australia’s relationship with China, the Belt and Road Initiative looms large. Australian politicians from both major parties rarely agree on much openly, but nearly all agree that China uses the BRI to achieve geopolitical goals. Many

When Canberra called for an international, independent inquiry into Covid-19 in April, Beijing deployed trade restrictions measures against Australian beef and barley the next month. And so when the Australian government responded firmly to China imposing a sweeping national security law in Hong