Small is beautiful for China

Australia’s efforts to curry favour in the Pacific by investing in smaller projects and firms are already facing competition from China.

One man, one vote

While democracies mobilise the talent and ideas of all their citizens, authoritarian states rely on the agenda of their leadership cabal and China is the latest nation to pay the price for one man’s ambition.

Sanction Chinese companies supporting Russia in Ukraine

Australia should take concrete action against China’s material support for Russia’s illegal invasion and brutal occupation of Ukraine.

Facing China together

Australia’s leaders must be clear about the threat which an aggressive authoritarian China poses to the world, and the need for resolve in defending our freedom.

Meeting the challenge of communist China

The problem of dealing with a belligerent communist China is the geopolitical challenge of the age. Its favourable resolution will open the door to global amity. The alternative is enduring global instability, confrontation, and the risk of a major war in the Pacific, fought with nuclear weapons standing ready on a hair trigger.

Party of one

China faces myriad challenges, from a sluggish economy, a huge property bubble and a demographic time bomb to deeply indebted local governments. But the fact that it is run by one man who is unwilling either to share power or to designate a successor may yet prove to be its biggest problem.

The political thought of Xi Jinping

Like Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping has established himself as China’s absolute dictator but his policies of internal repression and external aggression are motivated by ideology as well as personal power and nationalism.

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.