In the weeks leading up to the first anniversary of Pierre Ryckmans’ passing this August, the Australian Centre on China in the World commemorated Pierre (Simon Leys) by screening the film adaptation of his 1991 novel La mort de Napoléon, and by reprinting the introduction to and first lecture in his 1996 ABC Boyer Lectures, later … more
On 24 November 2015, the website, The Australia-China Story, created by the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW), was launched at Parliament House in Canberra by the Hon Dr Andrew Leigh, a parliamentarian, public intellectual and member of the CIW Advisory Board. Dr Leigh also formally launched the 2014 China Story Yearbook: Shared Destiny in … more
Lois Conner, the New York-based landscape photographer, is fond of saying: ‘What takes time, time respects’. As we have trudged around China with her hefty banquet camera, ‘Max’, titanium tripod and hand-made film-holders pursuing joint scholarly and artistic projects, I have often heard her repeat the line. The photograph featured here was made in 1998 … more
The town of Zhongdian 中甸 in China’s southwest Yunnan province celebrated its victory in becoming the core of the renamed ‘Shangri-la County’ in December 2001. Located in the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture 迪庆藏族自治州 བདེ་ཆེན་བོད་རིགས་རང་སྐྱོང་ཁུལ་, Zhongdian (now Shangri-la ཞང་རི་ལ་ or 香格里拉 in Chinese) had fended off a number of competitors for the title, including the towns of Chayu 察隅 རྫ་ཡུལ་རྫོང་ and Bomi … more
David Murphy is a doctoral candidate at the Australian Centre on China in the World, ANU. His research on corporate political activity in China focusses on the influence exerted by major Chinese corporations and industry bodies on trade policy. He has worked in both Australia and China in consulting and advisory firms specialising in trade policy analysis … more
China Story Yearbook 2014 — Shared Destiny was launched in Melbourne by the Chancellor of The Australian National University (ANU), Professor the Hon Gareth Evans, on 5 November 2015. Produced by the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) the Yearbook series is now published by ANU Press. The 2014 Yearbook, the third volume … more
In his recent work, the renowned historian Wang Gungwu 王赓武 has from various angles discussed ideas about Chinese civilisation, holistic Chinese approaches to understanding the country’s place in global affairs and the world order in the twenty-first century. Grounded in his profound scholarship on China, South-east Asia and enriched by his capacious understanding of world … more
The building created for the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) 中華全球研究中心, the founding of which was announced by the then Australian prime minister, the Hon Kevin Rudd, during his George E Morrison Oration of April 2010, was conceived by Geremie Barmé and Benjamin Penny and designed by the Beijing-based architect Gerald Szeto … more
The I Ching 易經, or Book of Change, is not just a Chinese book, it is the Chinese book. John Minford‘s translation of this book of books was published by Viking Penguin in October 2014. His introduction to that book, itself a masterful overview of this Chinese classic and its international fate, was an edited-down version of … more
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. In it I refer to comments that I made nearly a decade earlier, in 1997, at the invitation … more
