China
What are China’s long-term Antarctic ambitions?
The recent opening of China’s Qinling base, its third permanent Antarctic station, has worried some Australian and American observers. Their concerns suggest it may be time…
Pakistan: The dangerous reality of working on China’s megaprojects
The killing of five Chinese engineers in a 26 March suicide attack in Pakistan’s northwest has renewed concerns about the safety and security of Chinese personnel and projects in…
What should Australia be doing about the South China Sea?
It’s a mark of our turbulent times that China’s dangerous and illegal actions against the Philippines at the Second Thomas Shoal currently only sit in the second tier of…
A wave of US trilaterals sends a clear message to China
After months of speculation, the White House has confirmed the inaugural Trilateral Leaders’ Summit between Japan, the Philippines and the United States. On 11 April, US President…
Are Beijing and Washington testing the dark forest hypothesis?
Last week, Netflix released Three-Body Problem, its widely anticipated TV adaptation of the acclaimed novels by science fiction author Liu Cixin. While met with broadly positive…
Mind the gap: China’s megaproject promises fall short of reality in Southeast Asia
In Bangkok in 2010, Chinese and Thai authorities were discussing a dream: the possibility of working together on a high-speed rail project, which would be Southeast Asia’s first…
China and the great global AI governance divide
For all the common global purpose on the need to manage the risks associated with the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence, deep fissures about how to govern this new…
Mapping the oceans is the new front in the battle for influence in the Indian Ocean
Hydrography, the mapping of bodies of water and surrounding coastal details, is the new front in the battle for influence in the Indian Ocean. There is growing competition among…
Opium and the colonial narco-state
Book review: Smoke and ashes: Opium’s hidden histories by Amitav Ghosh (Murray, 2024)
Switching for a while from fiction to fact, Amitav Ghosh has written an account of …
Where did that Chinese police video come from?
Last night’s 60 Minutes broadcast in Australia featured extraordinary footage of 2017 Chinese police raids in Fiji, followed by the extraction of 77 People’s Republic of China…