Richard McGregor

Senior Fellow for East Asia
Areas of expertise

China’s political system and the workings and structure of the communist party; China’s foreign relations, with an emphasis on ties with Japan, the two Koreas, and Southeast Asia; Australia’s relations with Asia

Richard McGregor
Biography
Publications
News and media

Richard McGregor is Senior Fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute, Australia’s premier foreign policy think tank.

Richard is a former Beijing and Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times and the author of numerous books on East Asia.

His most recent book, Xi Jinping: The Backlash, was published by Penguin Random House Australia as a Lowy Institute Paper in August 2019. His book on Sino-Japanese relations, Asia’s Reckoning: China, Japan and the Fate of US Power in the Pacific Century (Penguin Books, 2017), was called “shrewd and knowing” by The Wall Street Journal and the “best book of the year” by the Literary Review in the United Kingdom. In late 2018, it won the Prime Minister of Australia’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. His book, The Party (Penguin Books, 2010), on the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party, was translated into seven languages and chosen by the Asia Society and Mainichi Shimbun in Japan as their book of the year.

Richard is also a Senior Associate (Non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in the United States. He was a visiting scholar at the Wilson Center and George Washington University in Washington, DC from 2014 to 2016.

Chinese ambassador’s rosy pitch masks Xi’s top-down power play
Commentary
Chinese ambassador’s rosy pitch masks Xi’s top-down power play
Originally published in the Australian Financial Review
How Donald Trump has turned the White House into his Imperial Court
Commentary
How Donald Trump has turned the White House into his Imperial Court
Originally published in the Australian Financial Review
If Russia is the tornado, China is the climate: a slow shift in global power
Commentary
If Russia is the tornado, China is the climate: a slow shift in global power
Originally published in the Australian Financial Review
Spy games: how China could take Taiwan without a war
Commentary
Spy games: how China could take Taiwan without a war
Originally published in The Australian Financial Review
Between China and Trump, little wonder Australia and Japan have lots to talk about – even if not a wartime past
Between China and Trump, little wonder Australia and Japan have lots to talk about – even if not a wartime past
Neither nation can handle China on their own, but must also know that the US can engage in naked coercion, too.
There’s no free lunch with Xi, as Trump will surely remind Albanese
Commentary
There’s no free lunch with Xi, as Trump will surely remind Albanese
Originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald
Rumours of Xi’s downfall distract from China’s real challenges
Commentary
Rumours of Xi’s downfall distract from China’s real challenges
Originally published in The Australian Financial Review
US-China competiton: A view from Australia and the Pacific
Commentary
US-China competiton: A view from Australia and the Pacific
Originally published in CSIS China Power Project
The World According to Xi Jinping
Special Feature
The World According to Xi Jinping
Xi remains committed to turning China into a prosperous, high-tech superpower that will be able not just to challenge the United States, but to surpass it in many areas.
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