After the Thaw: How to deal with China – Sydney

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Join us on Wednesday, February 15 as we host CIS Scholars-in-residence James Mann and Alice Han, as well as journalist and china experts Richard McGregor and James Laurenceson for a lively panel discussion moderated by Tom Switzer on Australia’s relations with China as the US-China competition remains intense.

China begins the New Year with a healthcare crisis, a weakening economy, declining population, a property crisis and political protests. These vulnerabilities — each attributable to the Chinese Communist Party – raise important questions:

Is China’s rise to global dominance inevitable? Can Xi Jinping expect to maintain political control across an increasingly restless country? With the very real weaknesses of the real-estate industry, will China’s high-growth economy come to an end despite the abandonment of zero Covid?

Given the thaw in Sino-Australia relations, should Canberra redefine its policy approach away from the more assertive diplomacy of recent times? Would a continuing Australian thaw with China affect Canberra’s alliance with the United States?

James Mann is a multi-award winning journalist, author and the CIS Scholar-in-residence for 2023. He was Chief of the Beijing bureau for the  Los Angeles Times from 1984 – 1987 and has appeared in publications such as The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and The American Prospect. James is author several books including The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression (Penguin, 2007).

Alice Han is the director of China for global macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm Greenmantle and the CIS Scholar-in-residence for 2022. Her academic work and media publications on China and fintech have been published by the Hoover Institution, Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy.

Richard McGregor is an Australian journalist, writer, and author. He is currently Senior Fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute. Richard is a former Beijing and Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times and author of Xi Jinping: The Backlash (Penguin, 2019).

James Laurenceson is Director and Professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute (UTS), University of Technology Sydney. He has previously held appointments at the University of Queensland, Shandong University (China) and Shimonoseki City University (Japan).

Tom Switzer is executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies and a presenter at the ABC’s Radio National.