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.

After annexation: How China plans to run Taiwan
Analysis
After annexation: How China plans to run Taiwan
Beijing needs to do more than just take Taiwan; it needs to govern it as well, a task that its scholars admit will be a fraught, decades-long project.
“Why would Japan meet with a small country like Australia?”
“Why would Japan meet with a small country like Australia?”
Tokyo’s warming to Canberra tracks directly with its cooling on Beijing.
Purging the generals confirms Xi’s absolute power
Commentary
Purging the generals confirms Xi’s absolute power
Originally published in the Australian Financial Review
The Broken China Dream — how Xi turned back the clock on reform
Commentary
The Broken China Dream — how Xi turned back the clock on reform
Originally published in the Financial Times
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
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