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
25 February 2023
Your atrocity is worse than my atrocity A reply to Richard Cribb
The your atrocity is worse than my atrocity argument at the core of Richard Cribbs response to Richard Culllen over Japan needs to be handled with care.
16 January 2023
Japanese Ambassador breaches protocol, pushes Australia to embrace China threat
Asa nation Japan would not win many Nobel peace prizes.
6 January 2023
Russia warns Japan on openly unfriendly positions
Moscow has now warned that Japans openly unfriendly positions make delayed peace treaty talks impossible. Australia has some connections with those 'unfriendly positions.
2 January 2023
Can Taiwan avoid the fate of Ukraine?
With Russian armies attacking into Ukraine, many have assumed Taiwan faces a similar threat from Mainland China.
30 November 2022
Taiwan backs Chiang Kai-sheks great grandson in push for peace with Beijing
Defeated in 1949 in its civil war against Chinas pro-Communist forces, the Nationalist KMT, or Kuo Min-tang, party has had a victory. But it had to wait till last Sundays Taiwan mayoral elections, where it won 13 of Taiwans 23 district electorates.
8 November 2022
The PM gushes enthusiasm for closer military ties with Japan. China sees it differently
From the start there was little in PM Albaneses CV to suggest familiarity with foreign policy, Thanks to a recent interview with him in The Australian we discover he knows even less.
18 October 2022
Australia's anti-China obsession
Sinophobia is embedded in the Australian DNA. Canberras Vietnam War follies were an early proof.
13 October 2022
The War in Ukraine: A report from Moscow
At last count there was only one English speaker reporting the war from the Russian side. For this recent visitor to Moscow, Mr Putins war hardly seemed to exist. No soldiers are marching the streets. The TV featured endless food shows.
26 September 2022
PM attending controversial Abe State funeral a diplomatic mis-step
Mr Albanese is coming to Tokyo for the September 27 state funeral of former Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Does our PM know or care about Abe's background? Two thirds of Japanese people oppose the state funeral.
22 September 2022
Ukraine: Western missteps lead to something much worse
When even our media of conscience lose interest in the details of emerging East West crises the results can be tragic.
13 September 2022
Will Russia join China in the Pacific?
For Russia, China is the key was a claim made for the recent Eastern Economic Forum held in Vladivostok annually, and attended by Russias President Putin.
11 September 2022
Japan can only blame itself for failure on the 'northern territories'.
Japan has protested Moscows use of four Japanese claimed islands during its recent Vostok -2022 military exercises in Russias Far East and Japans northern seas.
6 September 2022
Uyghurs and the Bachelet report
As UN high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet has released the report of her office into humanrights concerns in Chinas Xinjiang province. Amongst other things it accuses officials in the province oftorturing Uyghurs detained for suspected dissident crimes.
26 August 2022
Another unprofessional performance by Four Corners, this time on Xinjiang
Several weeks ago Four Corners gave us a special program about Xinjiang Uyghurs sent to prison-style camps and forced to learn Chinese. I watched it recently as a rebroadcast.
22 August 2022
The Chinese non-threat
Our resident non-Chinese speaking, non-Chinese informed but bitterly China is expansionist-aggressive' commentators in the mainstream media in Australia dont have,or even want to have, any idea about China?
2 August 2022
Morrison and Japan's new rightist religions
Japans New Religions are becoming an international problem.
20 July 2022
The propaganda war in Ukraine
Freedom of press critics have complained how the Russian government news program, RT, has been blocked by many Western outlets during the Ukrainian fighting.
9 July 2022
Shinzo Abe, his wife and North Korea
Giving tribute to the deceased former Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister Albanese described him as a true patriot.
1 July 2022
The sufferings of the North Korean people are a blot on the conscience and humanity of the West
Just twenty years ago the world had the chance to put an end to this suffering. It said no, and allowed a Japanese leader, Abe Shinzo, to impose his sadistic will on that long traumatised nation.
21 June 2022
Anti-China is in the Australian DNA
Is there any hope for Australia-China relations? I have spent most of a 60 year career on the periphery of those relations - in Canberra, Hong Kong, Moscow and Japan, with some time in China mainly during the crucial Cultural Revolution period.
14 June 2022
Amnesia over Ukraine
The West seems to have forgotten there are several precedents for a solution in Ukraine.
10 May 2022
The Western reactions to Ukraine and Solomon Islands events have somethingin common
It's an ugly mistake called phenomenalism.
3 May 2022
The decline in Australian diplomatic skills
The Solomon Islands fiasco confirms what some of us have long known - the gradual decline in the quality of Australian foreign policy.
21 April 2022
Western media have failed dismally in reporting the Ukraine war
While Western news agencies and media have been falling over each other in the rush to cover the Ukrainian side of the story the Russian side of the story has been ignored.
22 March 2022
Western media hypocrisy in reporting from Ukraine
For eight years Ukraines military and ultra-nationalists militias have felt free to try to ravage the two Donbas hold-outs, beginning with the total destruction of a large modern airport of Donetsk.
8 February 2022
Peng Shuai returns serve on the media beat-up merchants
The tennis player's story was distorted by the media. But we won't hear any apologies from the blame-China brigade.
7 February 2022
Japans master plan for victory: what could have been
In Australia we like to believe that the US Pacific Fleet saved us from Japanese attack in 1942-1944, but that is only partly true.
3 February 2022
French initiatives to calm Ukraine tension reduce invasion danger
As France works to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine, the anti-Russian media will need to find another bone to chew on.
29 January 2022
Duplicitous Ukrainian government is no innocent victim of Russian bullying
Anti-Russian troops and militias have been determined to wipe out the two pro-Russian provincial holdouts approved by the 2015 Minsk agreement.
22 January 2022
The Peng Shuai affair: the West's reaction should be laughed out of court
The use by China critics of a tennis player's broken relationship with a senior party official to paint the regime in Beijing as evil is absurd.
8 January 2022
How Ukraine's dominant right wing undermines the peace
Kiev's determination to extinguish pro-Russian sentiment in its two far eastern provinces has derailed the Minsk agreement, which offered the best hope for stability in the region.
1 January 2022
Japan's powerful hawks kill damaging leaks in pursuit of North Korea
Japan's commitment to a campaign to return citizens abducted by North Korea decades ago betrays its desire to ensure North Korea remains an enemy.
12 November 2021
What a relief to hear an Australian leader talking sense at last about China
The complex state of Beijing-Taipei relations that the anti-China hawks do not understand or probably worse don't want to understand.
29 October 2021
Conservatives likely to retain power in Japanese election
As Japan heads to an election this weekend, the Liberal Democratic Party is expected to retain government over weakened progressive parties.
17 October 2021
The remarkable story of Japan's North Korean abductees
Nearly two decades after North Korea retuned five people it abducted to their home country of Japan, efforts to silence those who challenge the government line continue.
8 October 2021
China, Taiwan and the US: the real terms of the deal
The US and China established full diplomatic relations in 1979, but that year the US Congress wrote its own script for Taiwan. Today, what the Chinese side interprets as word games by the US may wreak deadly consequences.
30 September 2021
Fumio Kishida, the colourless new Japanese PM
One incident more than any other tells us what we need to know about the just-elected leader of Japans ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the rather colourless Fumio Kishida.
26 September 2021
When it comes to China, our media 'experts' need a lot of help
Since the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal our mainstream media experts have doubled down on the claim Beijing is expansionist. Since few of them can read or speak Chinese maybe I can help them.
15 September 2021
70 years and several sea changes later, ANZUS Treaty serves a different world
When the ANZUS Treaty was signed 70 years ago, Japan was considered a dangerous aggressor, and China was a friend.
6 September 2021
China policy takes centre stage as Japan's ruling party searches for new leader
Elections to select a new leader for Japans ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) could finally see some clarity over Tokyos policy towards China.
2 September 2021
Francis James and the Wakhan Corridor into Afghanistan
We are told the fall of Kabul will be a bonus for an expansionist China.
16 August 2021
Afghanistan is gone,what comes next?
After Vietnam, and the Chinese civil war that preceded it, we assumed that the lessons had been learned - that a rural-based guerrilla movement facing a corrupt government can prevail provided it has leadership and an ideology to cling to.
18 July 2021
The Afghanistan failure is history repeating itself but there may be profound consequences.
Afghanistans fall to the Taliban will do much to change the balance of power in Heartland central Asia.
15 July 2021
Women's rights in Afghanistan-a lost opportunity in the 1970s.
In Afghanistan today the US calls for the rights of women to be respected. But it was the US that acted in 1978 so that womens rights would suffer.
20 June 2021
ASPI misses the mark on Ukraine
ASPI - Australian Strategic Policy Institute - claims to have some of Australias foremost strategic thinkers working for it. Number-two ASPI staffer, Mr Michael Shoebridge, appeared on a YouTube video some time back warning about Russian plans to attack Ukraine by moving troops to the Ukrainian border, and the measures to be taken by Ukraine, the US and UK together in response.
14 June 2021
The Tiananmen Square massacre: the one sided story
If you thought we knew everything about the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 3-4, 1989, think again. Mysteries remain. Some are so significant we need to review our ideas about what was going on in China at that time.
26 May 2021
Daniel Ellsberg's nuclear disclosures over Taiwan
Working on Canberra's China desk, some time after the 1958 Taiwan Straits crisis, we knew already from various sources what Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has now formally disclosed - that at the height of the crisis the US was prepared to use nuclear weapons to defend Quemoy, a Taiwan-held island close to Chinas coast and under heavy Chinese attack.