Foreign affairs

Military base on Vanuatu

On April 9 Fairfax Media, citing anonymous sources, reported that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Vanuatu were engaged in talks about establishing a PRC military base in the Pacific state:

Fairfax Media can reveal there have been preliminary discussions between the Chinese and Vanuatu governments about a military build-up in the island nation.

By James Laurenceson

Note: This article appeared in the South China Morning Post on April 29 2018.

Australia-China relations need a reset. But this is unlikely as long as the Australian prime minister himself remains a stumbling block. 

This article explores the evolution of Malcolm Fraser's views on China. While Gough Whitlam is fondly remembered as a trailblazer for normalising Australia‐China relations, Fraser was a pioneer in rendering a sense of bipartisanship in Australia's China policy. Fraser was not initially a Sino‐enthusiast, however. He came from a background of staunch anti‐Communism and throughout the 1950s and 1960s believed that China posed a major threat to stability in the Asia Pacific.

In a 2015 research report for the Australia-China Relations Institute, former New Zealand High Commissioner in Canberra John Larkindale wrote of the New Zealand-China relationship:[1]

The relationship has never become a topic for partisan political division, though elements of China’s growing presence in New Zealand and aspects of the economic links are increasingly attracting debate, and sometimes controversy.

By James Laurenceson

Note: This article appeared in the Australian Institute for International Affairs' blog, Australian Outlook, on March 2 2018.

By James Laurenceson

Note: This article was appeared in The Australian Financial Review on February 28 2018.

As I sit at my desk contemplating the latest round of panicky comments about China's influence operations in Australia – including claims about how they are supposedly undermining the military technology lead of the US – my attention keeps being drawn to two astonishing statistics.

By Bob Carr

Note: This article appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on February 21 2018.

By Bob Carr

Note: This article appeared in the South China Morning Post on February 19 2018.

On September 7 2013 at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University, Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time outlined a vision for an overland ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ connecting Central Asia and China’s western provinces. In an address to the Indonesian Parliament in October 2013, President Xi announced the development of a ‘New Maritime Silk Road’ spanning Southeast Asia.

In July 2017 the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) published the fact sheet ‘Australia’s tilt on China’, which details Australian government representatives’ statements on China and the Australia-China relationship in the first half of the year.[1]

Since this time, the messages sent on the bilateral relationship have been mixed..