As Covid-19 continues to ravage much of the world, Australia is stepping up to assist its near neighbors in their fight against the virus. After several years of falling aid spending, last October’s announcement of $500 million over three years for Covid-19 vaccines on top of an earlier $300 million commitment indicates that Australia is […]
Tag Archives: China
As the world looks on, seemingly helplessly, the Myanmar military – Tatmadaw – continues its campaign of violence to repress protests aimed at restoring the country’s fledgling democracy. Despite a proposed pause, with the Tatmadaw saying they will only respond to events that undermine broadly conceived security, the protests are likely to continue and the […]
Myanmar’s recent military coup was a shock, especially for subscribers to the view that democracy is inevitable. But it was not, for anyone who has watched the country, a surprise. The country’s National League for Democracy (NLD, headed by the revered Aung San Suu Kyi, recorded a strong, 60 per cent, majority in the country’s […]
It may be an uncomfortable truth, but Australia has monumentally mishandled its relationship with China. If the future with our largest trading partner is now uncertain, we overwhelmingly have ourselves to blame. China is Australia’s largest trading partner – it has been sheer luck that Australia has had the commodities that a booming China wants […]
(First published today in Crikey.com) While the world wasn’t watching, Sri Lanka has had a coup, which may or may not be constitutional. On Friday, the president replaced an elected prime minister with one who had been voted out of office on the back of war crimes allegations, human rights abuses and corruption allegations. Following […]
The Pacific Ocean may have been named for its peaceful winds, but this year’s 18 nation Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) has been among the most combative in its five-decade history. At issue was a confluence of sharply competing interests, with China’s growing role at the centre of them. China’s delegation stormed out of the meeting […]
The visit to Indonesia by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison, within days of taking office, has been widely hailed as a success, with the signing of an effective free trade agreement and a further tilt towards a closer strategic relationship. The five point agreement visit was said to ‘add ballast’ to the bilateral relationship, reprising […]
China’s formalization this week of Xi Jinping as president0 for life marks that country’s turn away from partially accountable leadership to a model that is, in effect, a dictatorship. This runs counter to not only China’s post-Mao Zedong 10 year changes of leadership but also a more general global trend towards democracy. Yet Xi is […]
It is unsurprising that Australia’s 2017 foreign policy white paper says little of direct substance and is cautious about change. The world around us is rapidly changing and increasingly uncertain, and our foreign policy boffins generally don’t like unpredictability. But that’s what they have, and have managed to allude to it without providing a detailed […]
In a world that seems to be more rather than less prone to confrontation, China and India are now squaring off against each other on a remote plateau in a corner of the almost as remote country of Bhutan. Bhutan, an ally of India, is wedged between the two Asian powers, with China claiming a […]