Asia
An emerging role for the UN in the North Korean crisis
Last month, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman visited North Korean officials to promote a political solution to heightened tensions over…
China and North Korea: Following the paper trail
Bill Gertz, senior editor of The Washington Free Beacon, specialises in scoops. But even by his high standards, his 2 January story that states a ‘(s)ecret Chinese Communist Party…
Best of The Interpreter 2017: The Rohingya Crisis
In July, shortly before an escalation of clashes in Rakhine state intensified the exodus of Rohingya people from Myanmar, Elliot Brennan wrote of Myanmar:
Naypyidaw has failed to…
Best of The Interpreter 2017: China's influence
Former senator Sam Dastyari cetainly found that history repeats itself as farce. Or as Stephen Conroy, the former Labor defence spokesman that Dastyari…
The crackdown on free press in India
In June, India’s former president Pranab Mukherjee drove home the point to the Indian media that ‘discussion and dissension’ is crucial for a vibrant democracy and that public…
Commentary
How to handle the finger-wagging from Beijing
Originally published in the Australian Financial Review (Photo:
Merriden Varrall
‘Economic aggression’: Donald Trump picks a fight with China
The Trump administration’s determination to meet China’s ‘economic aggression’, announced in this week’s National Security Strategy (NSS), is already being portrayed as a striking…
Xi saves sea slugs on the sea floor
This post is based on Episode 16 of The Little Red Podcast, featuring Kate Barclay and Michael Fabinyi of the University of Technology, Sydney.
My first culinary meeting with a…
A free press is a magic weapon against China's influence peddling
Australia’s complicated relationship with China is in the throes of a long overdue reset. A stream of reports about Chinese Communist Party influence in Australian …
Clear messages required in Twitter-age of diplomacy
Robert Ayson is quite right to pick me up on the distinction between pre-emptive and preventative military strikes. My post on Australia’s policy towards a US attack on North…