China
Geoff Raby reviews ‘The Political Thought of Xi Jinping’ by Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung
Two of the defining figures of our age are China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Both are authoritarian rulers intent on reshaping the global Western-led order. They despise and mistrust the United States equally, and, to justify their hold on power, promote a nationalist and civilisationist vision that elevates the long historical and cultural roots of their societies. They have defined themselves as indispensable for their respective countries’ futures and standing in the world.
... (read more)In 22 May 2023, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Papua New Guinea (PNG) Defence Minister Win Bakri Daki signed a defence and maritime cooperation agreement in Port Moresby. Blinken stepped in after US President Joe Biden’s last-minute cancellation. Had he attended, it would reportedly have been the first time a US president had visited a Pacific Island country other than US territories such as Hawaii and Guam. This is on the back of having pledged an additional US$800 million at a US-Pacific Summit in late 2022 to help tackle climate change, overfishing, and maritime security.
... (read more)Robert Wellington reviews 'The Silk Road: Connecting histories and futures' by Tim Winter
The Silk Road is not one place, nor is it a particular route for travel, trade, and cross-cultural exchange. It is an idea, and a powerful one at that, as Tim Winter’s Silk Road: Connecting histories and futures shows. The concept of the Seidenstraße was popularised by Ferdinand von Richthofen in the 1870s to define the trade routes westwards from Han China in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Since then scholars have argued for many Silk Roads over land and sea between Africa, Eurasia, and the islands around those landmasses through which goods and ideas have been exchanged for at least two millennia.
... (read more)Australia’s fraught journey with China continues. The Albanese government now wrestles with the same harsh global and regional realities as its predecessors. The crisis brought about by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in early August now appears to have ruptured much of the initial attempts on both the Australian and Chinese sides to at least begin talking to each other again.
... (read more)Hugh White reviews 'Australia’s China Odyssey: From euphoria to fear' by James Curran
On 17 November 2011, President Barack Obama quoted Banjo Paterson to an audience of Australian and American military personnel at RAAF Base Darwin. He recited a question that Paterson posed about Australia in a poem he wrote to celebrate Federation in 1901: ‘Hath she the strength for the burden laid upon her, hath she the power to protect and guard her own?’ The question haunts us still. Obama assured his listeners that the answer was ‘yes’, but everything about the circumstances of his speech suggested the opposite.
... (read more)Iva Glisic reviews 'Internationalist Aesthetics: China and early Soviet culture' by Edward Tyerman
‘We are drawn to this China, even though we still do not know China,’ wrote Soviet avant-garde writer and theorist Sergei Tretyakov in 1925. ‘But we must get to know China, we must get to know it well, and we must get to know it quickly.’ Tretyakov’s call was underpinned by a real sense of political urgency: the failure of socialist revolutions across Europe had prompted a Soviet pivot toward Asia, and China had emerged as a potential partner for fostering ‘an international community of enemies of capital’. Yet despite being geographically adjacent, Russia and China had long perceived each other as unfamiliar and distant. In an effort to bridge this divide, a comprehensive cultural campaign was devised to draw China closer to the Soviet public.
... (read more)James Jiang reviews 'Kingdom of Characters: A tale of language, obsession, and genius in modern China' by Jing Tsu
Picture, poem, or puzzle? The Chinese written character has been one of the most enduring obstacles to and catalysts for intercultural appreciation. When, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel wanted to demonstrate the relative backwardness of Oriental thought, he could find no better exhibit than the form of its writing. Attached as it was to ‘the sensuous image’, the putatively pictographic Chinese character forfeited access to the conceptual abstraction that afforded European thinkers their passports to the ‘free, ideal realm of Spirit’.
... (read more)Tim Robertson reviews 'China Panic: Australia's alternative to paranoia and pandering' by David Brophy
Moral certitude, wrong-headedness, and ignorance inform what passes for debate about China in Australia today. There is so much grandiose proselytising born out of flawed history and tired tropes. Considering how ill-informed the most prominent Australian commentators are about China, it’s quite a feat that they’re often more deceived about their own nation.
... (read more)Gavin Leuzzi reviews 'Fairweather and China' by Claire Roberts
Since the time of celebrated figure painter Gu Kaizhi (345–406 CE) of the Jin dynasty (266–420 CE), artists in China have been researchers of sorts. Over millennia, a scholarly ideal in painting would emerge. Late in their working lives, many artists sought an aesthetic that was uncontrived and conformed to the inner workings of nature. For Nanjing-based art historian Xue Xiang, this was Fairweather’s achievement. A Scottish-born artist, son of civil servants to the British Raj, war survivor, migrant, vagabond, builder of makeshift rafts and huts, well-connected recluse, acclaimed foster child of Australian art: what makes Ian Fairweather resonate with Chinese artists across millennia?
... (read more)The Truth About China by Bill Birtles, The Beijing Bureau by Trevor Watkins and Melissa Roberts, and The Last Correspondent by Michael Smith
It has become a rite of passage for foreign correspondents returning home from a stint in China to pen a memoir recounting their experiences. All too often, the story begins with the said reporter crossing into mainland China at Lo Wu, having just spent time enjoying the bright lights of Hong Kong. Clearly, the Lo Wu railway station holds a certain allure for wandering Australian journalists.
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