One of the more arcane developments in contemporary trade policy is the recently tabled US proposal for reform of the arrangements for managing trade disputes between members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). It is a landscape marked by statistics, legal texts, and arguments. However, reflected in the microcosm is a wider universe featuring the Continue reading »
International Relations
The recklessness of Australian politicians and mainstream media and the damage which that has caused, is abundantly clear in the latest poll, carried out by the Lowy Institute on Australian attitudes to China. The irresponsibility began with Clive Hamilton’s ‘Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia’ (2018), with its provocative cover picture of a massive Chinese Continue reading »
While the boom in unsuccessful on-shore (ie non-boat) asylum applications started in 2015 when Peter Dutton was Home Affairs Minister, as time goes by it will be Dutton and the Murdoch press that will try to make it Labor’s Achillies heel. In May 2023, primary asylum applications were 1,896, the highest monthly level since international Continue reading »
Beijing, Tehran, and Islamabad know that their mutual goal of ‘peaceful development’ and expanded Asian trade routes will be unattainable without solving the terrorism dilemma in neighbouring Afghanistan. First published in The Cradle June 13, 2023 This month, Beijing hosted the first-ever tripartite security dialogue between Iran, Pakistan, and China. The gathering took place against Continue reading »
Prosaic economic factors, not politics, are driving the growth in China-Australia trade, ensuring “China will only become more important as Australia’s trading partner of choice,” writes James Laurenceson. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has made clear that Australia’s relationship with China is “not going to go back to where we were”. There will be no “reset”. That’s Continue reading »
In an opinion piece published in The Weekend Australian (10 June 2023), Paul Monk offers his response to critics of the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine agreement. A central focus of his critique is this open letter signed by more than 100 academics. As two of the principal co-authors of the letter, we requested a right of Continue reading »
Call it Carr’s law. I’m pretty confident it withstands any testing. It’s simple: find someone talking up war with China and, if they were around 20 years ago, you find they were a supporter of the Iraq invasion. Few learn from error. On the other hand, stupidity is a constant in human affairs. Against it, Continue reading »
Should the US go to war with China, Taiwan’s largest chip maker, TSMC will be the first target to be blown up, according to a strategist at the US Air Force’s Air War College. Not by China, but by the US military. US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, on his visit to Beijing is clearly Continue reading »
Why does Washington believe they have the right to conduct joint military exercises off the Chinese Pacific coast, but will not tolerate even the barest hint of those activities by China and Cuba in ‘their’ maritime neighbourhood? American suspicions that China is militarising Cuba has been met with the Chinese response that ‘they are jumping Continue reading »
For a long time in the future, in the increasingly fierce and implacable competition between China on one side and the United States and the West on the other, the competition for global discourse power will be the decisive battlefield between them. And who can defeat the enemy on this battlefield will determine to a Continue reading »