Sydney, London and Hong Kong-based writer Bruce Maxwell looks at untold or little-known aspects of Chinese and Australian affairs, media, related sea stories, and an Asia-Pacific détente.
These short cameo stories span a broad range of our recent history and related endeavors. Read any topic of interest, in any order, when time or the inclination allows.
Topics range from the Sydney University Freedom Ride and The Push of the swinging 60s to adventure and war corresponding for Fleet Street papers, and on to what is happening now in the South China Sea, based on 100 voyages in those waters.
Powerful China, the United States, Russia and Europe are in focus, as is Australia’s evolving relations with neighboring Asian countries, and with Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia in the Pacific.
Accounts include dinner aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, an invitation to the Coronation of the Sultan of Selangor, and in Australia new insights into Whitlam’s dismissal and the Nugan Hand Bank affair.
But the underlying theme is China and the Chinese, with whom Australia and Australian Chinese alike will have a different relationship in the years ahead. This book argues that knowing more about our mutual past is one way to ensure a peaceful future.
It also suggests professional journalists must re-take their profession in both old and new media formats to effectively counter ”fake news” and equally, contrived news. Much-needed legal reforms are discussed.
