Tokyo’s security apparatus must have followed with amazement that excellent series by Max Suich in the AFR of 16-18 May, revealing the anti-China antics of their Australian opposite numbers. A elected member of Australia’s parliament driven out in disgrace for maintaining a relationship with suspected Chinese government agents?  In Japan

The year was 1962. As Canberra’s first trainee in Chinese I had been placed on the Department of External Affairs China desk and told to monitor rising tension along the Sino-Indian Himalayan frontier. Beijing was complaining about repeated Indian frontier violations and warning there would be consequences if India went

In concert, the US and the UK in the 1960s seized the island of Diego Garcia, expelled its inhabitants and converted it into a massive airbase for the bombing of Middle Eastern and African targets. Both countries continue to defy a ruling by the International Court of Justice to transfer the

Begins:  Today our intelligence agencies and bureaucrats tell us that China is the enemy. But less than 50 years ago the same agencies and bureaucrats (or their  predecessors) were warning us that the enemy against which we had to prepare was Japan .   The story begins in the early

(Australian Foreign Minister, Marise Payne: “I have previously raised Australia’s strong concerns about reports of mass detentions of Uighurs in Xinjiang. These disturbing reports today reinforce Australia’s view and we reiterate those concerns.”)  Australian politicians have traditionally had a hard time making up their minds over China’s distant Xinjiang province.

The call is for Australia to cooperate with the US to counter Beijing’s allegedly expansionist activities in the South China Sea. But was it not the US itself, in its 1951 San Francisco peace treaty with Japan – signed and ratified by Canberra and 47 others – who in effect

Article written 2017 and regarded too controversial for the public Pearls and Irritations blog run by ex Australian Ambassador to Japan, John Menadue. Menadue now decries the pernicious influence of ASIO on Australian foreign policy: I have spent almost my entire adult as an Australian involved closely with Asia – a

Advocates of Asian language learning seem not to have realised what is needed for proper mastery of a non-European language – at the very least two years of concentrated learning and emotional experience. There are no shortcuts.  Employers cannot be expected to make use of the many half-baked language graduates