Watching China Watching    The following essay, written in November 1983, appeared in the Australian weekly The National Times in January 1984 under the title ‘China Blames the West for “Cultural Pollution” ’.… Read

The Australian Centre on China in the World is marking this day, one that some writers call ’35th May’, by screening the 1995 documentary film The Gate of Heavenly Peace. Produced by the Boston-based Long Bow Group, the film has enjoyed critical acclaim, and a measure of controversy, since its debut at the New York Film Festival.… Read

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
— William Blake By September 2014, some forty-eight high-level Communist Party cadres, military officials and party-state bureaucrats (that is, those ranked at deputy provincial level/ ministry level and higher 副省、副部、副军级以上干部) had been swept up in the vaunted Xi Jinping-Wang Qishan post-Eighteenth Party Congress anti-corruption campaign.… Read

Anthony C Yu was Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Humanities at The University of Chicago. In his work he sought to reinterpret classical Chinese narratives and poetry in light of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.… Read

Today, 11 August 2015, marks the first year since the passing of Pierre Ryckmans, known to most of his readers by the nom de plume, Simon Leys. Pierre Ryckmans was a mentor and inspiration to many students of China, in particular those he taught at The Australian National University from 1970 to 1987.… Read

The following speech was written as a keynote address for the annual meeting of The Oriental Society of Australia in December 2006, a year before the ouster of the John Howard-led Liberal Coalition Federal Goverment in Canberra.… Read