Stability or submission?

The governments of Australia and China both ostensibly want to improve their rocky relationship, but the shape this should take is seen in very different terms in Beijing compared to Canberra.

Red tinted glasses

Innumerable articles dissect or criticise how Australia views China, but it’s China’s ideological perception of the world which may be more relevant to our diplomatic and strategic relations.

Paper tigers

There is no shortage of appeasers in the West who believe that China’s military might renders support for Taiwan futile, but these are the same people who argued against supporting Ukraine faced with the ‘might’ of the Russian army.

Slaying the blue dragon

China’s ambitions of imperialist expansion in the South China Season and the Indo-Pacific need to be contained by allied determination, given China’s complete disdain for other nation’s rights and sovereignty.

Overreach

In her new book, Susan Shirk sets out to explain how relations between China and the West have deteriorated, noting that China went into imperial overdrive well before Xi came to wield sole power.

The risk of authoritarian AI

If we are wary about AI we should be even more circumspect about AI-enabled products and services from authoritarian countries that share neither our values nor our interests.

Facing the dragon

China’s decision to place bounties on eight exiled activists, two of whom live in Australia, is part of a pattern of transnational repression, and a typically brazen violation of human rights, personal freedoms and national sovereignty.

Calling out Chinese cyber attacks

Chinese cyber-attacks on Australian and Western assets are a major threat and, like their Russian, North Korean and Iranian counterparts, should be called out by democratic governments.

China’s hidden hand

A new book by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg explores how the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence operations strive to undermine Western democratic institutions.

Standing together

If a country and economy like Australia can remain steady in the face of Beijing’s attempts to weaponise trade, and can stand alongside partners who are doing the same, Beijing will have a shrinking strategic space in which to play its coercive trade games.

China remains the greatest threat to national security

While China is lifting some of the economic sanctions imposed on Australian trade, its long-term aim of dominating the region, coercing its neighbours and ignoring international norms remains as clear as ever.

China’s war on history

Fighting historical nihilism has been high on the list of Xi Jinping’s fight for regime security. As China reverts increasingly backwards into an era of thought control and totalitarian rule it is once again the people that suffer.