“Visit Malaysia Year 2014” was expected to bolster Malaysia’s growing Chinese tourism market: Malaysia’s third-largest. Last October, commemorating four decades of close relations, Chinese president Xi…
The largest language promotion project the world has ever seen?
Chinese teacher/Shutterstock
While China’s dramatic economic and trade impact on Africa has caught global attention, there has little focus on its role in education. But there are important questions raised by China’s education push…
The idea that there is a “land grab” taking place in developing nations began with the publication of a report, Seized!, by the NGO Grain. This rang an alarm bell about large-scale land acquisitions…
White water rafting is popular in China, but Chinese tourists have different expectations.
Ralf Buckley
For countries that promote themselves as tourist destinations, China has - for some years - been the new Japan. Two decades ago, tourist towns such as Australia’s Gold Coast put up bilingual signs and…
The Chinese TV market is hard to crack.
Shutterstock
ABC International has reasons to be proud of its recent “landmark” deal to provide ABC content in China. The deal, which will see the establishment of an online portal, also seems to make it harder for…
High-speed trains, such as this one on the Hangzhou-Shanghai route, will soon link China’s entire urban spine from Beijing to Hong Kong.
Chris Hale
As a young university student, I first visited Guangzhou during the mid-1990s and found it a gloomy and unsettling place. The third world, undoubtedly. When I went back again in 2010, it was transformed…
The news that the ABC is to establish an ‘online portal’ in China that will allow it to ‘represent and sell media content across China’ has been greeted with understandable enthusiasm by the ABC. The ABC…
Recent analysis by Morgan Stanley suggests China may be approaching a so-called “Minsky moment”. A Minsky moment, named for American economist Hynan Minsky, is when debt-induced financing becomes unsustainable…
Signing a Economic Partnership Agreement with Japan was the highlight of Tony Abbott’s whirlwind northeast Asia trip, which also took in China and South Korea.
EPA/Kimmasa Mayama
Prime minister Tony Abbott’s diplomatic and trade mission to northeast Asia can be hailed as a success. Overall, it met its main objectives. The trip has strengthened the already deepening relationship…
Chinese media coverage of the missing flight MH370 is acting as a proxy for the country’s positioning as a rising diplomatic power with expansionary ambition in the Asian-Pacific. Since the flight was…
We are a friend: Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has told the Chinese the visit is about more than simply making a deal.
AAP
Prime minister Tony Abbott has cast his visit to China as not just aimed at doing a deal but being a friend – while simultaneously stressing he is anxious to advance negotiations for the free trade agreement…
Xi Jinping’s ‘China Dream’ is couched in the opaque language of the Communist Party, leaving China watchers guessing at exactly what it all means.
EPA/Diego Azubel
“If you want to know the future of the world,” Yu Keping says, pouring green tea into a big red mug, “please understand China.” He pauses. “But if you want to know China, please understand the Chinese…
The government is seeking a free trade agreement with China by the end of the year, but concerns still remain about Chinese investment in Australia.
Daniel Munoz/AAP
As Prime Minister Tony Abbott shifts his Asian tour focus to China, it seems likely the threshold for formal approval on Chinese investment in Australia will be raised to A$1 billion. But any move to open…
Achieving a free trade agreement with China would be a major achievement for the Abbott government given the obstacles currently in the way.
AAP/Daniel Munoz
Despite the misgivings of the sceptics, prime minister Tony Abbott’s high-profile, potentially high-risk trade mission to northeast Asia could be a triumph. The free trade agreement (FTA) with Japan is…
Two dozen ships anchored outside Gladstone harbour in 2008, waiting to load coal.
milton.v1/Flickr
We are in the coal business. If you want decent hospitals, schools and police on the beat we all need to understand that. – Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, June 2012. It was a rare moment of unscripted…
The proposed railway hasn’t got everyone in Laos excited.
LUONG THAI LINH/EPA
Despite impressive economic growth rates over the last decade, a third of Laos’s population still lives below the extreme poverty line of US$1.25 per day. Most of the extreme poor Laos are ethnic minorities…
Tony Abbott has declared Japan, under prime minister Shinzo Abe, as Australia’s ‘best friend in Asia’. But this might come at a cost as Abbott seeks to close a FTA with China.
EPA/Mast Irham
Prime minister Tony Abbott will be hoping the Japanese leg of his ambitious trade trip to northeast Asia can replicate the success of securing a free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea. The close relations…
Chinese anger at Malaysia’s handling of the search for flight MH370 has had a damaging impact on the bilateral relationship.
EPA/Kamal Sellehuddin
When Malaysian Airlines flight 370 failed to arrive, authorities at first concluded it had crashed in a relatively shallow part of the Gulf of Thailand. As the days passed more countries dispatched ships…
Bags of talent: Chinese migrants outside Beijing’s rail terminal.
EPA/How Hwee Young
Mass migration is a huge issue in China’s fast-growing cities, deepening existing anxieties about urban sprawl, the overheated real estate markets, overcrowding, land disputes, and social unrest. On a…