Godfree Roberts
After graduating from the University of Queensland, Godfree Roberts received his doctorate from UMass, Amherst. His newsletter, ‘Here Comes China’, reflects his fifty years’ study of Chinese civilization. His book, ‘Why China Leads the World: Talent at the Top, Data in the Middle, Democracy at the Bottom’, re-examines everything we think we know about China–its government, its economy, its human rights and its soft and hard power–and demonstrates that our ‘knowledge’ is mostly nonsense, dreamed up during the 1950s and amplified over generations.
Godfree's recent articles
13 August 2022
What does China's censor censor?
The Chinese trust their government media, but we distrust ours because they have, for so long, distracted us from important issues and lied to us about war. Lee Kuan Yew framed the issue around the Philippines media.
13 July 2021
What did we do to China?
Half of us reckon China is responsible for improving the relationship between our countries, forty per cent expect China to attack us, and two-thirds say its interference in our affairs is a major problem. The Lowy Institutes Natasha Kassam says, No other country in the world not Taiwan, Japan or South Korea is talking about the likelihood of war on a day-to-day basis.
20 May 2021
Who had Covid first?
The Coronavirus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak -Dr Francis Collins, Director, The National Institutes of Health.Governments treat epidemics as acts of a capricious God and have done so every flu season for centuries. 'Herd immunity' is the rule, not the exception.
5 May 2021
War with China despite their immense military capabilities?
Five years ago, I would've said that the possibility of a kinetic war in the Indo-Pacific was very unlikely, now it is more likely than it was then. This is something that you and I may well have to confront in the next 5 to 10 years, Christopher Pyne.