Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, the University of Melbourne
5:30 – 7:00pm Thursday 14 March 2019
Old Arts Theatre A (Room 103), Old Arts (Building 149), The University of Melbourne
Xi Jinping has arguably become the most powerful person in the world. This has come from a combination of the absolute sovereignty of his communist party over all things China; his ‘red genes’, family heritage, which cannot be challenged; his purging and purifying the party, and centralising and personalising power; and the disarray of the nations and leaders championing the liberal democratic worldview. Can such power be limited, staunched or even reversed, within China or without? This is a giant question for our times.
About the Speaker
Rowan Callick is author, journalist, and an Industry Fellow at Griffith University’s Asia Institute. He has three times worked as a China Correspondent, once for The Australian Financial Review and twice for The Australian, completing his last posting in April 2018 before returning to Melbourne. He has written three books on contemporary Chinese subjects, published in both English and Chinese. He has won two Walkley Awards for coverage of China, and has won the Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year. He was a member of the Foreign Minister’s Advisory Council. He is a member of the advisory board of La Trobe University’s China Studies Centre. He has been appointed an honorary fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He was awarded the OBE in 2015 for services to journalism and journalist training in Papua New Guinea. He is a BA Honours graduate of the University of Exeter, England.