China

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

Will the bell Toll? The quiet flood of Japanese investment into Australia over the past few years amid at times mounting alarm about much lower levels of Chinese investment has been regularly noted here. But the astounding story of corruption and mismanagement inside the largest single Japanese

The Mekong, Southeast Asia’s most important river, has for millennia supported the rise and fall of empires and is responsible for the livelihood of over 65 million people who live directly on its riverbanks, relying on the river for food, accommodation and employment. The river

Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic seen as Russia’s most loyal ally in Central Asia, has been rocked by unrest after a disputed parliamentary election held on 4 October. Moscow’s reactions to the Kyrgyz crisis have so far been relatively ambivalent, even though the nation hosts a Russian

When the last of the big four state-owned Chinese banks listed a decade ago, one could be forgiven for thinking that the age of mega Chinese financial listings was over. After all, with financial services being such a strategic sector for the Chinese Communist Party, who would have thought that the

President Xi Jinping grabbed headlines last month with the announcement that China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is aiming for carbon neutrality within 40 years. Xi’s speech, to the UN General Assembly, gave no details about how this would be achieved, beyond a

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) war with the Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist Party) started in the 1920s, hit pause during the decade of anti-Japanese war and the Second World War, then culminated in an immediate post-war period with the remnants of the KMT fleeing to Formosa/Taiwan in

The relative stability along the China-India borders since the Doklam standoff in 2017 has been upended this year by the outbreak of two skirmishes, in May and August. The tensions have added to the challenges facing the two countries. India has seen a rapid increase in Covid-19 cases recently and

2020 was supposed to be a transformational year in China’s relations with the European Union. Next to the annual bilateral summit, an extraordinary gathering of all 27 EU heads of government and China’s leader Xi Jinping scheduled for September 14 in Leipzig was

The rushed departure from China of two Australian journalists, the ABC’s Bill Birtles and the Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith, marks a new low in a relationship which had already seemed to have reached rock bottom. The threats to the Australian journalists are bad enough of

Rumors circling about an impending major partnership between China and Iran seem to be accurate. A leaked draft of the agreement published by the New York Times in July indicates that it would involve a deep economic partnership which would open the door for strategic action. Ample speculation about

On Monday this week, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced it has commenced an investigation into whether Australia has been subsidising winemakers. This follows a parallel investigation launched two weeks ago to examine allegations that Australian winemakers have also been “dumping” their

“Strategy”, a term often used loosely in reference to long-term planning, has many published meanings. A military planner, though, sees a clear definition: a strategy is a stated plan for connecting ends (what to accomplish?), ways (how to do it?), and means (with what resources?). And while

It has been a little over a year since the Indian government under Narendra Modi curtailed the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir by revoking Article 370 of the Indian constitution. The article had given the state a certain degree of autonomy, including its own flag, constitution and freedom to enact

The main questions about the normalisation agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced a week ago are why did it happen and what will it change? It’s pretty clear what US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu get out of the deal – both leaders