Field notes from the new Cold War

The growing pace of strategic change means that every week brings more data points charting the Indo-Pacific’s slide towards a riskier, more dangerous reality.

Helping China chart a diplomatic course

China’s international behaviour reflects its friendlessness. Like Russia it relies on bullying and bluster, subornation and subversion rather than negotiation and persuasion, and Australia can help it chart a more productive path.

The real choice over China

A systematic series of measures must be adopted to protect Australia’s society, economy and politics from relentless interference from China.

Facing facts over China

Instead of looking to some ‘Beijing happy-o-meter’, we need to define our relationship with Communist China as China defines its with us – through decisions and actions rather than words.

China’s ethnic persecution laid bare

The Chinese leadership – and their Western apologists – can no longer hide behind hollow denials about the horrors taking place in the Xinjiang region.

The logic of conventional deterrence

Much of the responsibility for Australia’s future security will be borne by our diplomats and the foreign policy they are charged with pursuing, as well as our military force.

Unplugging the Chinese outrage machine

We must not allow the CCP to create a world beyond its borders in which we all feel compelled not to think – and so not to say – what Beijing doesn’t want to hear. And we need to see this paranoid CCP behaviour for what it is: weakness and anxiety masquerading as power.

China’s southward march has little historical foundation

There’s little basis in history or economics for China’s claim to hegemony over the South China Sea or beyond, however much it expands its modern navy.

Understanding China’s view of international order

Whether you agree with any part of China’s perspective or not, it’s worth understanding how China’s foreign policy elite see regional and global power issues and the place of China on the world stage.

Beijing’s show of military might is a wake-up call for Australia

The massive military parade on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China was a clear demonstration of China’s increasing desire to project power across the Pacific.

The minnow embraces the whale

The Solomon Islands’ embrace of China may bring economic benefits but it also increases the risks of local conflict and the challenges faced by donors from democratic nations.

Australia’s China policy emerges in the USA

Rather than join the USA’s trade war against China, Scott Morrison used his state visit to call for broader international action to curb China’s economic, political and military assault on the wider world.