Gregory Clark
Gregory Clark was the first postwar Australian diplomat trained in Chinese, with postings to Hong Kong, Moscow and the UN before retiring in protest against the Vietnam War. After PhD studies at the ANU he became Japan correspondent for The Australian. A spell in Canberra’s Prime Ministers department led to professorships at Tokyo’s Sophia University and emeritus president of Tama University, Tokyo, before becoming co-founder of the very successful English language Akita Kokusai Daigaku. He has now retired to Latin America (Peru) and Kiwi fruit growing in Boso peninsular south of Tokyo.
His works include ‘In Fear of China’ (1969) and several books in Japan on education and foreign policy.
He used to speak Chinese and Russian with fluency. He now speaks Japanese and Spanish.
Gregory's recent articles
30 March 2025
Bumpy relations between Japan and China
After a long hiatus, relations between China and Japan are finally stirring into action.
25 February 2025
Peace, both for Ukraine and North Korea too?
As President Trump seeks to bring an end to the Ukrainian conflict, at the Asian end of the Eurasian continent some similar but much less known peace-restoring movements are underway.
10 January 2025
How to protest against the atrocities in Gaza
Remember the Vietnam War? The barbarism there cannot be compared with what we see almost daily in Gaza. But just looking on impotently will not solve the problem.
25 November 2024
Time to take China and Latin America more seriously
The invitation said: ‘Global Multinational Corporations Summit.’ Main Topic: ‘An opening China and the World.’
9 November 2024
Russia's reasons for attacking Ukraine
Vladimir Putin rarely uses English in his speeches. So if in his speech to the recent BRICS meeting in Kazan he insisted the reason for Russia’s 2022 attack on Ukraine was that he was duped (he pronounced it ‘dooped’) by Germany and France in the 2014-5 Minsk Accords then he probably meant it.
28 October 2024
Breaking the deadlock in Japan-North Korean relations
To break the deadlock in Japan-North Korea relations, Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, has proposed liaison offices in the capitals of both countries to resolve the poisonous abductees issue - the fate of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the seventies and eighties.
19 October 2024
Who really owns the South China Sea?
We are told the AUKUS ‘security partnership’ with the US and UK requires Australia to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) to accompany AUKUS. They will operate mainly in the South China Sea, allegedly to deter China’s 'expansionist' goals.
5 October 2024
Japan's surprising new prime minister
Japan’s new prime minister, Ishiba Shigeru, has called for an Asian NATO. But salivating hawks should restrain the glee.
17 September 2024
A solution in Ukraine?
There must be a negotiated end to the Ukraine War. The alternative is nuclear armageddon.
10 August 2024
Japan - Hiroshima and Project Hula
What a difference a day (or a week) makes. What a difference the mere translation of a word makes.
6 August 2024
Panic as Japan stocks take biggest dive since Black Monday, 1987
If it was panic last Friday, the Asahi Shimbun declared when the stock market fell more than 2,200 points, or 5.8 percent. It was double panic by this afternoon (Monday) when the market fell even more, by 3,800 points to the 31,000 mark.
18 July 2024
Putin’s mistake in Ukraine: Moscow forced to move to Novosibirsk?
In 2004, Russia’s President Putin said the collapse of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This was picked up by our hawks as a Moscow wish for more Cold War.
27 June 2024
NYT confirms war-ending Russian-Ukraine peace agreement sabotaged by West
With much less drama than its famous 1971 Pentagon Papers, the New York Times has disclosed three documents confirming that Russia and Ukraine were close to war-ending agreements in the first half of 2022, shortly after Moscow began its so-called ‘special operation’ attack on Ukraine, February 24, 2022.
15 June 2024
BBC reporting on Ukraine
The BBC has a loose bolt somewhere. It has now begun a strange campaign saying it is dedicated to non-spin reporting.
17 May 2024
The Kremlin needs a new PR agent
Moscow would have us believe it is fighting a life and death struggle in the muddy trenches of Donbas. But what do we get to see on the inauguration of its president? Glittering gold chambers and goose-stepping soldiers.
22 April 2024
Marking 10 years of the Russo-Ukraine War
On February 28, 2022, four days after Russia had attacked into Ukraine, Moscow and Kiev began peace talks.
17 April 2024
“Seamless integration”: Japan to become sub-contractor for US aggression towards China
‘New era for alliance’ headlined the right wing Japan Times after the Japan-US summit talks in Washington this week between President Biden and Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida.. But not everyone was so enthused.
12 April 2024
Japan's abductions myths have kept a nation in poverty for decades
How can it happen that a person who probably no longer exists can keep an entire nation, North Korea, in poverty for more than twenty years, and the rest of us under prolonged nuclear threat? The story is complicated.
4 April 2024
Western hawks continue to see North Korea as a target for attack
With Japans former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, assassinated, Japans current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has been saying he wants direct talks with North Koreas leader, Kim Jong Un -a reversal of Abes position.
26 March 2024
Lunacy: Australia pays the US billions to "keep those Chinese at bay"
When Canberra told us we had to join the US in its cruel attempt to prevent a Vietnamese peasant army from overthrowing a US-armed Saigon government, some of us thought the politicians were plain stupid.
19 March 2024
The failure of Western on-the-ground war reporting
On the ground reporting by Western media of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been weak.
6 March 2024
Hiding in plain sight - Malaysian Airlines flight 370
As we approach the tenth anniversary of the 2014 disappearance of flight 370, Malaysian Airlines, we are getting the usual barrage of media speculation about the alleged mystery and its possible causes.
3 March 2024
Can war on the Korean Peninsula be averted?
The US seems to have decided it cannot tolerate China as a threat to its global hegemony.
3 February 2024
Cautious, middle of the road wisdom wont solve Asias problems
The recent Statement from former Australian Foreign Ministers Gareth Evans and Bob Carr calling for Australia to play a role in seeking detente between the US and China in Asia is worthy. But is it realistic? It tells us that the Australia-Japan initiated International Commission on Nuclear Non- Proliferation and Disarmament of 2009, is a model of creative, middle power diplomacy. But in the name of protecting its own security Tokyo rejects any disarmament proposal thathints of sacrificing absolute US nuclear security. How is that supposed to promote detente in Asia? A resolution of the North Korea...
21 January 2024
Slovakia, Hungary criticise western values, halt support for Ukraine
Slovakia is the poor relation created when the former Czechoslovakia divided in 1993 into the Czech and Slovak Republics. The Czech Republic has hewn closely to EU and NATO policies over Ukraine. But despite NATO membership the Slovak Republic has decided to halt military aid to Ukraine. And its prime minister, Robert Fico, has now come out with a strong pro-Russian statement over the Ukraine conflict.
9 January 2024
Gut instincts and North Korean relations
Between years 2000 and 2018 the North Korea and South Korea governments issued three joint declarations all promising South Korean economic aid to North Korea and North Korean moves to denuclearisation.
6 January 2024
Two grievous Australian policy mistakes-Israel and China
Where fear of China is involved there is no conscience for the mistakes of the past. Nor can we expect any sensibility in the plans for the future.
17 December 2023
A fatal blow for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida
The latest Japanese political scandal involving at least four top government ministers and numerous junior officials is widely seen as a fatal blow to the prime minister Fumio Kishida already dogged by a weak image and record low popularity polls.
7 December 2023
The unflinching cruelty of Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissingers death has brought a flow of predictable judgements: He created some evils - 1973 Chile, for example. But overall he helped end the Cold War. And as a beneficiary - the 1971 opening to China, for example - Australians should be grateful.
14 November 2023
Impressions of China: political stagnation and an economy transformed
After a one week China tour organised by some Chinese entrepreneurs to mark the anniversary of the 1971 pingpong diplomacy which opened China to the outside world, two firm impressions remain. One is the extraordinary pace and dynamism of the economic, and social, progress. The other is the political stagnation, with our guides still clinging to the name of Chairman Mao.
27 October 2023
A Western disease of cause-and-effect amnesia
The savage Israeli reaction to the suggestion by UN Secretary-General, Antnio Guterres, that some Hamas actions may be a response to 56 years of Israeli repression was extraordinary. We have long known about Israeli sensitivity to criticism. But this brings things to a new level. Cannot Israel accept even some of its own responsibility for the Hamas response?
13 September 2023
Biden in Hanoi: The Domino theory rises again
By chance, US president Bidens goodwill visit to Vietnams communist government in Hanoi came just 50 years after the notorious 1972 Christmas bombings.
3 September 2023
War fever and the military-industrial complex
In the wake of communist collapse we have been presented with a new paradigm in international affairs. No, it is not a tinkering with the standard communism versus democracy we have had to tolerate for more than half a century of war. By strange twist of fate it is democracy which isseen as creating the danger.
30 August 2023
Autonomy: An answer to the Ukraine war
As the Ukraine war moves to its inevitable climax, with either foreign physical intervention and/or use of tactical nuclear weapons seen as the only answers, maybe it is time to look for another answer.
21 August 2023
Japan's dangerous demonisation of North Korea
Japan is a member of the Quad - the grouping that claims it is working for a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. But in its relations with North Korea, Tokyo is not working for anything free, open, prosperous and inclusive.
16 August 2023
US unilateralism gone mad, HK's Lee banned from APEC
So US-sanctioned, Hong Kong Chief Executive, John Lee, will not be allowed into the US to attend the forthcoming APEC annual conference. This is US unilateralism gone mad.
9 August 2023
Ukraine and the Minsk Accords
The Ukrainian war could be headed for a dangerous stalement, and at least some of the blame lies with Moscow and its supporters.
7 July 2023
Will the New York Times apologise for its Tiananmen coverage?
The New York Times has in recent years tried to redeem its reputation with a mea-culpa admission over its coverage of the blatantly transparent Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction myth that enabled the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But over its key role earlier in cementing the Tiananmen Square horror story we have as yet had no admissions of guilt.
29 June 2023
The UNs anti-North Korea symposium
Japans deserves some slack for its sensitivities over its wartime guilt. Others bear some responsibility for that guilt. But for Australia, as much a victim of past Japanese war crimes as most, to have sponsored an UN anti-North Korea symposium today (Friday, June 30) called by Japan in an obvious attempt to justify, or at least obscure, some of those crimes, and prepare the groundwork for future Asian wars, is, well extraordinary.
27 June 2023
Ellsbergs warning: stop US empire-building wars before they start
There is only one way to stop politicians and bureaucrats from beginning stupid and immoral wars.
18 June 2023
The Western fantasy of a Taiwanese proxy war against China
The Western hope that Taiwan could serve as a catalyst for an attack of China seems likely to remain the fantasy it always was.
11 June 2023
Psy-ops warriors: Tiananmen Square and the media-pack
As a Hong Kong based columnist for much of his writing career Nury Vittachi was known for his persistent anti-Beijing slant. But no longer. What changed his mind was the mainstream media - the BBC in particular - coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong riots.
8 June 2023
Ugly situation in Kosovo has parallels with Ukraine
The ugly situation developing in Kosovo, formerly a province of Serbia, has parallels with Ukraine. The result could be just as bloody. But is anyone listening?
24 May 2023
The orbit of Russian cultural influence
One of the stranger aspects of the current war, at least for this observer, is the sight of Ukrainian military commanders telling BBC cameras in perfect Russian of their anti-Moscow plans. They have yet to learn to speak Ukrainian.
26 April 2023
Japans 'strike north' military faction
As a Quad member Japan is supposed to be focussed on Taiwan and the South China Sea.
14 April 2023
Japan-North Korea top secret negotiations
In East West relations it has become something of a habit. First you reach an agreement promising flowers and chocolates. The other side reacts with concessions and hopes for a brighter future. Then your hawks move in. They say you should never have made those promises. The agreement is forgotten or denied, but only after your side has gained what the other side promised.
2 April 2023
Despite US pundits, the Taiwanese do not want war
By some strange reasoning NATO, the US and the pundits seem to think the current war between Russia - Ukraine is a precursor to hostilities they expect to see between Taiwan and China.
25 March 2023
Asian languages education: how did we end up in this mess?
How do we end up with an ALP government stupid enough to sign up for the ludicrous AUKUS proposal and the accompanying bogus, China threat scare?
9 March 2023
The BBC: a giant propaganda unit promoting the Ukrainian cause
In 2015 a BBC documentary on You Tube showed us the remarkable scene of a Ukrainian military unit trying to enter the outskirts of Slovyansk in the Donbas.