China's emergence as a major economic power will pose great challenges for the global community. It is now the major factor driving commodity prices and is an increasingly important investor in many developing countries as well as Australia. China is becoming a responsible stakeholder in the international economy, but the country’s economic takeoff has also...

Presents various approaches for Australia to play a role in shaping Afghanistan’s future, both unilaterally and by working with other nations. Summary: On 31 December 2014, Afghanistan will move from a UN-led period of ‘transition’ (2001–2014) to an Afghan-led and -owned ‘transformation decade’ (2015–2024). The transformation decade will seek to consolidate and build on the...

Introduction: The conflict in Syria has captured the imagination of Indonesian extremists in a way no foreign war has before. For the first time, Indonesians are going overseas to fight, not just to train, as in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and 1990s, or to give moral and financial support, as in the case of...

Abstract: That Solomon Islands village communities find their governments to be distant and invisible is not a new observation. Allen and Dinnen, 2013, have aptly described what happens locally as ‘beneath the state’. During the ‘tension years’ 1998-2003 Solomon Islands national government for an extended period was unable to function but village communities not involved...

The report explores how a controversial proposal in Indonesia to amend a 2001 law on special autonomy, that until mid-November seemed to be getting nowhere, was suddenly transformed into a detailed, practical program for improving the lives of indigenous Papuans. A draft bill containing some of the most interesting policy prescriptions on Papua in years...