With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attending the SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation) meeting in China this week, we may be witnessing a tectonic shift in international relations, one which could undermine the basis of Australia’s relations with Asia. Apart from anything else, how is Canberra’s much-favoured QUAD (Japan, India, Australia,

There was a time when Australian writings on China were first-class._ _ C.P. Fitzgerald’s classic, for example, ‘The Birth of Communist China’gave us a unbiassed insight to the factors that propelled the Communist forces to their 1949 victory. Postwar, the few who managed to get into China gave us a useful

July 9, 2025  Here in Japan that is partly true. The absence of media, political, academic and other forms of serious interest in Japan that I see around me is sad. But at the youth level there is enormous interest, and it owes much to none other than Menadue. As

After a long hiatus, relations between China and Japan are finally stirring into action. In late December, Japanese Foreign Minister, Iwaya Takeshi, visited China, where he met his counterpart Wang Yi and other Chinese officials. In the tradition of the 1971 Nagoya ping-pong diplomacy (which saw the diplomatic map of

As President Trump seeks to bring an end to the Ukrainian conflict, at the Asian end of the Eurasian continent some similar but much less known peace-restoring movements are underway. If both succeed the Eurasian continent could begin to move from an era of incessant conflict to one of ultimate

The invitation said: ‘Global Multinational Corporations Summit.’ Main Topic: ‘An opening China and the World.’ So I dutifully packed my bags and headed tor Beijing. There on the 70th floor of the luxurious Shangri-la hotel I found bosses and representatives of about 30 Chinese multinationals who wanted to talk about

Vladimir Putin rarely uses English in his speeches. So if in his speech to the recent BRICS meeting in Kazan he insisted the reason for Russia’s 2022 attack on Ukraine was that he was duped (he pronounced it ‘dooped’) by Germany and France in the 2014-5 Minsk Accords then he

We are told the AUKUS ‘security partnership’ with the US and UK requires Australia to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) to accompany AUKUS. They will operate mainly in the South China Sea, allegedly to deter China’s ‘expansionist’ goals. Alarmed, I set out to discover those expansionist goals. I

What a difference a day (or a week) makes. What a difference the mere translation of a word makes. As the war against Japan in the Pacific began to close, the Potsdam Conference, which decided to call for Japan’s unconditional surrender, began on July 17, 1945. On the day before,

In 2004, Russia’s President Putin said the collapse of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This was picked up by our hawks as a Moscow wish for more Cold War. They should have waited for the rest of the sentence: ’Tens of millions of our

With much less drama than its famous 1971 Pentagon Papers, the New York Times has disclosed three documents confirming that Russia and Ukraine were close to war-ending agreements in the first half of 2022, shortly after Moscow began its so-called ‘special operation’ attack on Ukraine, February 24, 2022. The newspaper

The BBC has a loose bolt somewhere. It has now begun a strange campaign saying it is dedicated to non-spin reporting. The slogan is ‘Absolutely no spin.’ It says it will deliver us to an ‘unspun world.’ To which I would say ‘if only that were true.’ But at times

The Kremlin needs a new PR agent. Moscow would have us believe it is fighting a life and death struggle in the muddy trenches of Donbas. But what do we get to see on the inauguration of its president? Glittering gold chambers and goose-stepping soldiers.  No doubt there is some

On February 28, 2022, four days after Russia had attacked into Ukraine, Moscow and Kiev began peace talks. The Russian attack had aimed to force Kiev to promise neutrality – i.e. not to join NATO. It also aimed to put an end to eight years of neo-NAZI and other militant

How can it happen that a person who probably no longer exists can keep an entire nation, North Korea, in poverty for more than twenty years, and the rest of us under prolonged nuclear threat? The story is complicated. In 2001 Tokyo sent a senior foreign ministry official to North

For eight years Ukraine’s military and ultra-nationalists militias have felt free to try to ravage the two Donbas hold-outs, beginning with the total destruction of a large modern airport of Donetsk. It is a well-known saying: In war the first casualty is the truth. Maybe that can now be changed:

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the 2014 disappearance of flight 370, Malaysian Airlines, we are getting the usual barrage of media speculation about the alleged mystery and its possible causes. Yet for me at the time, as a contributor to an Asian news service, there was no mystery.

Slovakia is the poor relation created when the former Czechoslovakia divided in 1993 into the Czech and Slovak Republics. The Czech Republic has hewn closely to EU and NATO policies over Ukraine. But despite NATO membership the Slovak Republic has decided to go its own way. It will halt military

Between years 2000 and 2018 the North Korea and South Korea governments issued three joint declarations all promising South Korean economic aid to North Korea and North Korean moves to denuclearisation. Year 2002 saw the Japanese-inspired Pyongyang Declaration promising even more of the same. But each time subsequent conservative governments

Where fear of China is involved there is no conscience for the mistakes of the past. Nor can we expect any sensibility in the plans for the future. As we move into the new year, two foreign policy mistakes need to be corrected. First is the idea that Israel needs

Henry Kissinger’s death has brought a flow of predictable judgements: ‘He created some evils – 1973 Chile, for example. But overall he helped end the Cold War.’ And as a beneficiary – the 1971 opening to China, for example – Australians should be grateful. His non-Anglo background and his experience

The economic progress has been even more impressive than what I, for one, had been led to believe – complex four or even six lane highway systems plus bullet train systems linking major cities; endless rows of high-rise around even minor towns or cities; broad car tunnels running miles under

By chance, US president Biden’s goodwill visit to Vietnam’s communist government in Hanoi came just 50 years after the notorious 1972 Christmas bombings. These bombings saw more than 200 American B-52s flying 730 sorties and dropping over 20,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam over a period of 12 days

So US-sanctioned, Hong Kong Chief Executive, John Lee, will not be allowed into the US to attend the forthcoming APEC annual conference. This is US unilateralism gone mad. We have seen it before, of course, with the US unilaterally refusing admission to national leaders it dislikes who wish to attend

The Ukrainian war could be headed for a dangerous stalement, and at least some of the blame lies with Moscow and its supporters. From the beginning there was too much emphasis by Moscow supporters on the NATO question. Nothing was going to change in Ukraine by harping on broken NATO

The New York Times has in recent years tried to redeem its reputation with a mea-culpa admission over its coverage of the blatantly transparent Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction myth that enabled the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But over its key role earlier in cementing the Tiananmen Square horror story

There is only one way to stop politicians and bureaucrats from beginning stupid and immoral wars. Before his recent death Daniel Ellsberg went out of his way to deliver an important message. This was the need to stop US empire-building wars before they start. His Pentagon Papers were not released until 1971

The Western hope that Taiwan could serve as a catalyst for an attack of China seems likely to remain the fantasy it always was. I first knew Taiwan in the sixties – dirt poor and brutally oppressive. A well-known lawyer, Duan-Mu Kai, I came to know spent his time rescuing

The ugly situation developing in Kosovo, formerly a province of Serbia, has parallels with Ukraine. The result could be just as bloody. But is anyone listening? The legal status of Kosovo remains obscure. Originally it was an autonomous province within Serbia. But the Albanian majority in the province claimed Serb

As a Hong Kong based columnist for much of his writing career Nury Vittachi was known for his persistent anti-Beijing slant. But no longer. What changed his mind was the mainstream media – the BBC in particular – coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong riots. Praised as democracy seekers, these

In East West relations it has become something of a habit. First you reach an agreement promising flowers and chocolates. The other side reacts with concessions and hopes for a brighter future. Then your hawks move in. They say you should never have made those promises. The agreement is forgotten

How do we end up with an ALP government stupid enough to sign up for the ludicrous AUKUS proposal and the accompanying bogus, China threat scare? Clearly part of the answer has to be the inability to understand Asia. And this is confirmed when we look at the background of most

In 2015 a BBC documentary on You Tube showed us the remarkable scene of a Ukrainian military unit trying to enter the outskirts of Slovyansk in the Donbas. Old men, young boys, large women came out to stop them. Some climbed on the tanks and other armoured vehicles. Some seized

The ‘your atrocity is worse than my atrocity’ argument at the core of Richard Cribb’s response to Richard Culllen over Japan needs to be handled with care (February 21.Pearls and Irritations)   Japan’s apologists can and do point to the  civilised treatment of Russian and German prisoners in the China wars

Over Ukraine, Russophobia has gone too far. Moscow deserves criticism for the crudity of its attacks on Ukraine (though I am not sure that it is a crime if a nation is not well prepared for war). But the reason for the attacks has been there, and valid, for eight

As a nation Japan would not win many Nobel peace prizes. For centuries its pirates pillaged Chinese coastal towns. In the 19th century carve-up of China, Japan gained Taiwan, the Liaodong peninsula and later Manchuria. In 1910 it colonised Korea. In 1937 it began its attack into China proper, killing close

Moscow has now warned that Japan’s ‘openly unfriendly positions’ make delayed peace treaty talks impossible. Australia has some connections with those ‘unfriendly positions.’ They include joining in sanctions against Moscow over the war in Ukraine. Sanctions are an ugly business and Moscow is right to react against them. They can

With Russian armies attacking into Ukraine, many have assumed Taiwan faces a similar threat from Mainland China. Similarities exist. Over Ukraine, Moscow mainly attacked because the Kiev government refused to honour the promise to grant autonomy to pro-Russian districts. Over Taiwan, Beijing has threatened to use force because the government

Defeated in 1949 in its civil war against China’s pro-Communist forces, the Nationalist KMT, or Kuo Min-tang, party has had a victory. But it had to wait till last Sunday’s Taiwan mayoral elections, where it won 13 of Taiwan’s 23 district electorates. Remarkably, the winner in the key election for

Sinophobia is embedded in the Australian DNA. Canberra’s Vietnam War follies were an early proof. Our Leftwing likes to believe that Canberra was dragged into the Vietnam war by the US. The reality was the exact opposite: Canberra, with its obsessive fear of China, helped drag Washington into that war.

At last count there was only one English speaker reporting the war from the Russian side. For this recent visitor to Moscow, Mr Putin’s war hardly seemed to exist. No soldiers are marching the streets. The TV featured endless food shows. Plaintive is not a word one would associate with

Mr Albanese is coming to Tokyo for the September 27 state funeral of former Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Does our PM know or care about Abe’s background? Two thirds of Japanese people oppose the state funeral. Not everyone will welcome the attention. Mr Abe’s death was at the hands

Japan has protested Moscow’s use of four Japanese claimed islands during its recent Vostok -2022 military exercises in Russia’s Far East and Japan’s northern seas. One can understand Tokyo’ s frustration. Through intensive talks it could have gained immediate ownership of two of the four islands now in dispute back

As UN high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet has released the report of her office into human rights concerns in China’s Xinjiang province. Amongst other things it accuses officials in the province of torturing Uyghurs detained for suspected dissident crimes. Torture is a topic familiar to Ms Bachelet. Her father was

Several weeks ago Four Corners gave us a special program about Xinjiang Uyghurs sent to prison-style camps and forced to learn Chinese. I watched it recently as a rebroadcast. I was once sent to an Australian military camp to learn Chinese, at Pt. Cook near Melbourne. Conditions were fairly severe.

Begins:  We hear much today about Xinjiang Uyghurs sent to prison-style camps and forced to learn Chinese.  Four Corners devoted a special program to it. I was once sent to an Australian camp to learn Chinese, at Pt. Cook near Melbourne. Conditions were fairly severe. Eight hours a day, five