The Lunar New Year comes early in 2023, and the incoming Year of the Rabbit offers possibilities of significant changes in personal and national fortunes. Those responsible for formulating Australia’s China policy are advised to watch developments carefully and be flexible in their responses. Over the years, I have learnt the important place in Chinese Continue reading »
Asia
With Japan just having taken over the presidency of the Group of 7 at the beginning of 2023, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has wound up a six-day visit to Britain, France, Italy, Canada and the United States. One of his main aims was to gain support for the rearmament of Japan, justifying it on the Continue reading »
As a nation Japan would not win many Nobel peace prizes. For centuries its pirates pillaged Chinese coastal towns. In the 19th century carve-up of China, Japan gained Taiwan, the Liaodong peninsula and later Manchuria. In 1910 it colonised Korea. In 1937 it began its attack into China proper, killing close to an estimated 20 million Continue reading »
To suggest that China and only China needs to provide negative COVID-19 tests, tests on arrival or even a complete ban of arrivals from China is a political and racist approach to a global health problem. The subject of Covid tests for travellers from China is arousing a lot of commentary in recent media reports. Continue reading »
The German government recently arrested 25 members of a conspiratorial right-wing group plotting to overthrow the government. One of those arrested was a member of a defunct German royal family that the group hoped to install as Germany’s new leader. In the United States, the Republican Party did well enough in the mid-term elections to Continue reading »
From China’s socialist path to Latin America’s left turn and Asean’s neutral stance, more countries are quietly but firmly spurning the Western world order. Instead, they seek to favour national interests, a more democratic form of international politics and mutual respect. The global significance of 2022 has been grossly underestimated. Its importance to world history Continue reading »
In Asian media this week – Indonesia to be an active ASEAN chair. Plus – South Korea’s global aspirations; Western and Asian views of the West; Anwar pledges to crack down on corruption; Softer tones in Taiwan rhetoric; Kishida’s diminishing political capital. Indonesia this year is the chair of ASEAN and The Jakarta Post lists Continue reading »
In legal circles, outsiders who hold forth on legal issues without understanding the law or knowing the facts are held in particular contempt. They are known as “barrack-room lawyers”, a term that originally derived from military slang. According to the Collins Dictionary, a barrack-room lawyer is “a person who freely offers opinions, especially in legal Continue reading »
The rising tension over Taiwan is not the making of either of the two Chinese parties to the dispute. After all, the fundamental problem has been the same since its inception. It was an unfinished civil war between two political factions, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China, over control of the country after Continue reading »
“I don’t know how they want to get undressed, above or below the waist, but I think it would be a disgusting sight in any case”, Volodya Pew-teen, as quoted by AP.
I’m just a low-income, sort-of white, ageing, male, semi-educated Aussie worker: a pleb. To rub shoulders with such VIPs is not one of my many privileges, so I have no direct, personal knowledge on those matters and it’s impossible for me to say either way.
Thank goodness!
What I can say with absolute certainty is that this is how people imagined the previous White House tenant: