Asia
A podium protest aimed at swimming’s administrators, not China
The World Aquatics Championships in Gwangju clearly won gold in the race for sporting headlines these last few days. Just like the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics last year, it seemed…
The bittersweet pill in the Australia-India sugar stoush
Over the past few months, sugar has featured prominently in India’s political and economic discussion. Countries such as Australia, Brazil and Guatemala are upset with the Indian…
China’s intelligence gathering ships change the equation
Exercise Talisman Sabre has finished, and the Australian, American and Japanese units involved have dispersed to their bases or operational deployments. So has the Chinese ship…
Malaysia’s Mahathir has no interest in building a dynasty
The name Mukhriz Mahathir – son of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad – is in the news once again, mostly by virtue of being the only child in the family to enter into…
The trouble in the air on a tense Tuesday in Northeast Asia
Last Tuesday (23 July) was a bad day in Northeast Asia, not just for what happened but what it foreshadows. Tensions are rising. After all, it’s not every day that a South Korean…
Can Taiwan’s President fend off a populist wave?
Last week, as Taiwan’s presidential race gradually gathers pace before a ballot next year, opposition Kuomintang candidate Han Kuo-yu climbed a banyan tree.
It was Han’s…
The importance of trust in preserving Antarctica’s future
For international governance of the near-pristine expanse of the Antarctic, consensus decision making is powerful indeed. This model, is the modus operandi of Antarctic law, and…
The limits to French grandeur in the Indo-Pacific
For the first time since the Geneva Agreements of 1954, France has turned its eyes towards what is now termed the Indo-Pacific. The renewal of Paris’s interest in the region not…
China’s head-spinning defence white paper
Readers of the white paper China’s National Defence in the New Era can be forgiven for their headaches as they move from one conflicting statement to another in Beijing’s latest…
Japanese lessons for Australia’s relations with China
In the 1970s, Australia’s main trading partner was Japan. For the first time we were dealing with a country outside the Anglosphere; not only one with a foreign language, but one…