On 12th March, IPAN ACT held a webinar in Canberra entitled AUKUS and Military Escalation – Who pays and who benefits? View the must-watch speeches from Alan Behm, Hugh White, Sue Wareham and Michelle Fahy below. Allan Behm (You can read the text of his speech previously published in Pearls and Irritations here). Prof. Hugh Continue reading »
Economy
“The climate crisis is too urgent for the U.S. or any country to allow outdated trade rules… to distract us from enacting bold climate policies,” argued one campaigner. As the Chinese government on Tuesday formally challenged what it termed “discriminatory” U.S. electric vehicle subsidies, climate action advocates warned that antiquated trade policies and international bickering Continue reading »
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. When they told us the men on bicycles wearing rubber sandals were the puppets of a China seeking to thrust Continue reading »
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 Continue reading »
Of course, at this time of rising living costs, economic uncertainty, and impending climate disaster, subsidising the British and American submarine construction industrial bases is the obvious priority. At least it seems that way to the Albanese government. The lack of a convincing strategic justification for the AUKUS-SSNs is a separate matter from the approach Continue reading »
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 Continue reading »
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. Western Australia exported $270 billion worth of goods in 2022-23, of which more than half, $147.7 billion worth, went to one country. Guess which one? China’s 54.6 Continue reading »
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. “The penetration rate of NEVs Continue reading »
Will a grid based around wind and solar kill manufacturing and industry? It’s what the naysayers – the Coalition and conservative agitators – want you to believe, but the experience in South Australia, which leads the world in the uptake of wind and solar, proves the opposite. The state’s transmission operator ElectraNet says wind and Continue reading »
One of the Ten Commandments says, with awkward bluntness: Thou Shalt Not Steal. Predictably, some are inclined to read certain qualifications in to this prohibition. As it happens, this sort of adaptive-thinking underpins arguments made in a recent article in the leading US journal, Foreign Policy. Briefly, in this article entitled: “Europe Edges Closer to Continue reading »