John Lee Cheong Seong | |
---|---|
Born | 1973 (age 49–50) Ipoh, Malaysia |
Nationality | Australian |
Occupation(s) | Academia and government |
John Lee is an Australian academic and policy expert working on international economic and security affairs with a focus on the Indo-Pacific. Lee was a senior adviser to Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop from 2016 to 2018. He was also appointed the government's lead adviser for the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper to guide Australian external policy for the next decade and beyond. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC and an Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney until 2022. Lee was a board member of the Institute for Regional Security (formerly Kokoda Foundation) from 2012 until August 2016. [1] [2]
Lee was born in Ipoh, Malaysia in 1973. He migrated to Australia with his family in 1979 at the age of six years, first to Newcastle and then Sydney from 1984 onward. [3] After boarding at the Sydney GPS school, St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill and finishing his HSC in 1991, he graduated with degrees in Arts (First Class in Philosophy) and Law from the University of New South Wales and obtained his masters and doctorate in international relations from the University of Oxford whilst on an Oxford Chevening Scholarship. [4]
Lee published a book, Will China fail? - the limits and contradictions of market socialism, in 2007. [5] An updated second edition was released in 2009. The subject of this book is the complexities and risks associated with China's approach to economic development, which Lee asserts to be flawed, unsustainable, dangerously unstable, and unlikely if not incapable of providing a foundation for the continuation of China's 'peaceful rise' or 'peaceful development'. [6] [7] In 2014, he co-authored a report with Paul Dibb titled Why China Will Not Become The Dominant Power in Asia [8] [9] The report rejects the idea that America should step back from the region and treat China as a strategic equal in Asia; that China's military, economic and demographic shortcomings are considerable; that a China-dominated Asian region is unlikely without American strategic withdrawal; and defence planning in Australia should not assume Chinese dominance as inevitable. [10] Lee has also emphasised the importance and desirability of Japanese power for a stable balance in the Indo-Pacific in the current century. [11]
Lee has written extensively on the subject of China's political-economy, [1] foreign policies of the United States, China, Japan, India, Australia and in Southeast Asia, and strategic and economic futures in East Asia. [12] Lee has published more than 300 articles in newspapers, magazines, and journals, [13] [14] including the Wall Street Journal, [15] International Herald Tribune, The Australian, the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Forbes, The Times of London, The Australian Financial Review, Time, Der Spiegel, South China Morning Post, Global Times, Washington Quarterly, [16] and Newsweek. [17]
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), has full diplomatic relations with 179 out of the other 192 United Nations member states, Cook Islands, Niue and the State of Palestine. China has had the most diplomatic missions of any state.
Singapore maintains diplomatic relations with 189 UN member states. The three exceptions are the Central African Republic, Monaco and South Sudan.
Realpolitik is the approach of conducting diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly following explicit ideological notions or moral and ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism. It is often simply referred to as pragmatism in politics, e.g. "pursuing pragmatic policies" or "realistic policies".
Foreign relations of Australia are influenced by its position as a leading trading nation and as a significant donor of humanitarian aid. Australia's foreign policy is guided by a commitment to multilateralism and regionalism, as well as to build strong bilateral relations with its allies. Key concerns include free trade, terrorism, refugees, economic co-operation with Asia and stability in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is active in the United Nations and the Commonwealth of Nations. Given its history of starting and supporting important regional and global initiatives, it has been described as a regional middle power par excellence.
In international relations, a middle power is a sovereign state that is not a great power nor a superpower, but still has large or moderate influence and international recognition.
John Joseph Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation.
The Pacific Century is a term that has been used to describe the 21st century through analogy with the term American Century. The implicit assumption underlying the usage of the term is that the 21st century will be dominated, especially economically, by countries in the Asia-Pacific region and major economies on the Pacific, most dominantly China ASEAN countries, Japan, South Korea, India, New Zealand and Australia, and to an extent, the United States. This idea can be compared to the historical Eurocentric/Atlantic viewpoint, which has dominated for the past two centuries.
The United States foreign policy toward the People's Republic of China originated during the Cold War. At that time, the U.S. had a containment policy against communist states. The leaked Pentagon Papers indicated the efforts by the U.S. to contain China through military actions undertaken in the Vietnam War. The containment policy centered around an island chain strategy. President Richard Nixon's China rapprochement signaled a shift in focus to gain leverage in containing the Soviet Union. Formal diplomatic ties between the U.S. and China were established in 1979, and with normalized trade relations since 2000, the U.S. and China have been linked by closer economic ties and more cordial relations.
The Chinese Century is a neologism suggesting that the 21st century may be geoeconomically or geopolitically dominated by the People's Republic of China, similar to how the "American Century" refers to the 20th century and the "British Centuries" to the 18th and 19th. The phrase is used particularly in association with the prediction that the economy of China may overtake the economy of the United States to be the largest in the world. A similar term is China's rise or rise of China.
A potential superpower is a state or other polity that is speculated to be—or to have the potential to soon become—a superpower.
The Act East policy is an effort by the government of India to cultivate extensive economic and strategic relations with the nations of Southeast Asia to bolster its standing as a regional power and a counterweight to the strategic influence of the People's Republic of China. Initiated in 1991, the Look East policy by Indian government marked a strategic shift in India’s perspective of the world. It was developed and enacted during the government of Prime Minister Narsimha Rao (1991–1996) and rigorously pursued by the successive administrations of Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998–2004) and Manmohan Singh (2004–2014).
Ross Eden Babbage is the Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Forum Pty Ltd and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) in Washington DC. Babbage is also Managing Director of Strategy International, a national security consulting and educational services company. Babbage formerly held the position as Head of Strategic Analysis in the Office of National Assessments and Assistant Secretary for ANZUS and then Force Development in the Department of Defence. He has also been an advisor to various government ministers and departments
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD), commonly known as the Quad, is a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan and the United States that is maintained by talks between member countries. The dialogue was initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with the support of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. The dialogue was paralleled by joint military exercises of an unprecedented scale, titled Exercise Malabar. The diplomatic and military arrangement was widely viewed as a response to increased Chinese economic and military power.
Sung-Yoon Lee is a scholar of Korean and East Asian studies, and specialist on North Korea. He is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the former Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies and assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He was also an associate in research at the Korea Institute, Harvard University. and a research fellow at the National Asia Research Program.
The most significant initiative made by the Narendra Modi government is the focus on neighbouring countries and major Asian powers coupled with emphasizing on the two decades old Look East policy. Asia being the major focus area of his foreign policy, Modi and his foreign minister chose several Asian countries for their initial bilateral visits. He has made state visits to Bhutan and Nepal and Japan within the first 100 days of his government and also hosted Asian leaders like former Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia, President Xi Jinping of China and Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng of Vietnam, apart from inviting SAARC leaders in his inauguration ceremony. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has also made official visits to several Asian capitals like Dhaka, Bangladesh, Kathmandu, Nepal, Naypidaw, Myanmar, Singapore, Hanoi, Vietnam, Manama, Bahrain, Kabul, Afghanistan, Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Malé, Maldives, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Seoul, South Korea and Beijing China.
Hugh White is an Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, long-time defence and intelligence analyst, and author who has published works on military strategy and international relations. He was Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Australian Department of Defence from 1995 until 2000 and was the inaugural Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). His 2019 book How to Defend Australia attracted national attention after raising the proposition of re-examining the proposition of an independently nuclear-armed Australia.
Paul Dibb AM is an English-born Australian strategist, academic and former defence intelligence official. He is currently emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre that is part of the Australian National University.
The People's Republic of China emerged as a great power and one of the three big players in the tri-polar geopolitics (PRC-US-USSR) during the Cold War, after the Korean War in 1950-1953 and the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, with its status as a recognized nuclear weapons state in 1960s. Currently, China has one of the world's largest populations, second largest GDP (nominal) and the largest economy in the world by PPP. China is now considered an emerging global superpower.
Coral Mary Bell was an Australian academic, who wrote extensively about international relations and power politics.
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