What is it about northeast Asia? Why is it that a part of the world that is a byword for unparalleled economic development and astounding social transformation can’t come to terms with its past and develop…
- Adjunct Professor, Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney
Whatever China’s policymakers do these days matters a lot, and not just to the denizens of the People’s Republic. On the contrary, for better or worse what happens in China has a powerful and often immediate…
The Federal Court’s decision to overturn the Adani Group’s federal environmental approval to build the A$16 billion Carmichael coal mine in Queensland highlights policy issues that have a significance…
Surveying the current world order, one might be forgiven for thinking that it is essentially ungovernable. Chaos, conflict and crises seem to be the order of the day. The phrase “international order” seems…
Foreign policy occupied a surprisingly prominent and controversial place at the ALP national conference. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the most contentious topic was asylum seeker policy – an issue that invariably…
“Awesome” may be the most abused and over-used word in recent history. For once, however, it seems appropriate. The news that Chinese authorities are contemplating creating a new megalopolis of some 130…
When the International Monetary Fund (IMF) criticises the European Union’s policies toward Greece as too harsh and threatens not to co-operate, we should pay attention. The IMF, after all, has developed…
What J.K. Galbraith famously called the conventional wisdom is a powerful thing to behold. There are few better local examples than the belief that the military alliance with the US is vital for the security…
Three big lessons came out of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. First, the Asian economies to our north could be a source of economic threat as well as opportunity. Second, economic crises…
It has become commonplace to observe that Australian policymakers face a major challenge trying to reconcile the strategic and economic aspects of foreign policy. But while we might have become used to…
Call me old-fashioned if you like, but I’ve always found it a bit difficult to take men who go to work wearing silk dresses, lots of jewellery, and improbably large hats terribly seriously. Plenty of people…
Impressionistic, subjective snapshots of complex societies are best avoided. And yet when you actually get the chance to live somewhere – even briefly – like most forms of temptation it is difficult to…
With the possible exception of North Korea, there aren’t too many countries that don’t like to think of themselves as “good international citizens”. For states such as Australia, it’s ostensibly one of…
China’s construction of new islands in the South China Sea has attracted a great deal of entirely predictable criticism and controversy. Surely no-one connected with this decision can be surprised at this…
One of the least surprising bits of news this week was the revelation that the United States will be “rotating” B-1 bombers through Australia after all. For anyone who has taken even the most cursory interest…
Being responsible for asylum seeker policy would be personally and practically challenging at the best of times. At the moment it is frankly nightmarish. No amount of money or career advancement could…
Rather appropriately, I discovered the art world’s big news in the pages of the Financial Times. Pablo Picasso’s Women of Algiers (Version O) sold for US$179.4 million at auction – the highest price ever…
Having a platform, albeit a modest one, from which to try and catch the world’s attention is a great privilege. The number of competing voices in the blogosphere means that the size of the audience is…
However disappointed we may be in Indonesia’s actions, it can make a couple of claims in its defence.
More than 20 years ago, two American academics, Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, wrote about what they described as The Real World Order: Zones of Peace/Zones of Turmoil. As is the way with such things…
In comedy timing is everything. So, too, in politics. In good times governing is – or ought to be – pretty straightforward. How hard can it be to divide up the windfall gains from a mining boom, for example…
Churchill’s famous aphorism that it’s better to jaw-jaw than to war-war has never been more apposite or timely. Although the usual suspects are queueing up to criticise the agreement between Iran and various…
Modern life is full of ironies, paradoxes and what Marxists used to call “contradictions”. Perhaps the greatest contradiction of all time is the possibility that the capitalist system is not only incompatible…
Even for a government that has recently made an artform of policy backflips, the Abbott government’s belated, but seemingly inevitable decision to join China’s proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment…
Lee Kuan Yew literally helped put Singapore on the map. Its subsequent influence far outstrips the tiny island’s geopolitical significance.
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