In A Stretch of the Imagination, an oration written for the Australian Centre on China in the World published recently in book form, a former ambassador to China Dr Stephen FitzGerald speaks of how the debate about Australia’s engagement with Asia that started in the 1960s, one that was frequently lead by nationally prominent figures, was ‘put to sleep’ by government fiat under conservative political leadership early this century.… Read

On 8 March 2013, the writer and rock musician Kaiser Kuo hosted a conversation at Capital M in Beijing with Geremie R. Barmé, Director of the Australian Centre for China in the World, as part of the Capital Literary Festival.… Read

  Zhua ji means to grab and tie. It refers to a young girl’s hairdo, two tufts sprouting up from the head. This is an image repeated in paper cuts and folk art.… Read

This essay was commissioned as a review of Kin-ming Liu’s edited volume, My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats and Journalists Reflect on their First Encounters with China, Hong Kong: East Slope publishing, 2012.… Read

Update on Australia-China Agenda 2013, 6 September 2013, on the eve of the Federal Election: THE AUSTRALIAN Centre on China in the World (CIW) engages with the public and policy discussion of relations with the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese world more broadly. … Read

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