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Author: Jeremy Clarke

  • INTERNATIONAL

    China's cultural memory can't be contained

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 18 April 2019
    2 Comments

    One hundred years on, the power of symbol lurks uncomfortably. To honour these students — these young protestors in Tiananmen — rallying for their nation in 1919 cannot but bring to mind other students marching through Beijing decades later. And yet, given the historical weight of 4 May, the government must commemorate it all the same.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Winter road trip to the China-Russian border

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 06 March 2019

    Any tourist to this spot presumably stands in awe under the character, having crossed the full delineation of Chinese territory, and then gazes out over the Heilongjiang to Russia on the other side. North: them. Here: us. Cue national pride.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In dialogue with China's avant-garde

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 06 February 2019
    2 Comments

    The exhibition stands as a celebration of the work of Xiao Lu and her contemporaries, who continue to clothe their lived experiences in images, acts and utterances, and in so doing communicate with others about the state of their lives as women and artists, their society and their nation.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    China needs more than Vatican diplomacy

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 28 September 2018
    4 Comments

    In light of the self-serving and at times criminal behavior of bishops around the world as revealed by the sexual abuse crisis, it might seem strange that the appointment of bishops is such a neuralgic issue for Vatican-China relations. But in China, the appointment of bishops has become the litmus test of a so-called orthodoxy in much the same way right-to-life issues are in the USA.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Scorsese misses the depths of the 'Japanese swamp'

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 22 February 2017
    7 Comments

    We are treated at length to Rodrigues' reflections upon the face of Christ, yet the beautiful inculturated image 'Madonna of the Snows' passes us quickly by. There are haunting local hymns yet the missionaries speak halting Japanese. The local church is served by a respected un-ordained head, who leads his fellow villagers in prayer and good works. The survival of the Japanese Catholic community rested on the feeble, faith-filled shoulders of the local women and men who kept praying even unto death.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Behind Trump's 'Happy Gilmore' moment with Taiwan

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 09 December 2016
    2 Comments

    Trump's phone call with Tsai Ing-wen is to diplomacy what Happy Gilmore's slap shot was to the Pro Golf Tour. It defies all convention, is appallingly out of context, and should not even work, but it might just augur a new way of doing things. That conversation disrupted previous norms, some of which resulted from decades of delicate, often secret, negotiations. In the midst of the confected outrage it is worth considering the event within the context of contemporary US-China relations.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal art installation quickens ancient footprints

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 27 September 2016
    1 Comment

    Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones' piece is profoundly moving. At first glance it is little more than a quirky reconfiguring of the architectural footprint of the Garden Palace that burned to the ground on 22 September 1882, taking with it a collection of precious Indigenous relics. A more informed engagement however reveals that Jones has created a provocative re-imagining and, through this, a re-membering of Australian colonial contact history which has deep resonances for today.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Mack Horton vs the People's Republic of China

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 17 August 2016
    3 Comments

    Horton desired to highlight the need for more stringent application of doping policies but in the process he enabled Chinese nationalists to bolster their inflated national pride, at his and Australia's expense. That he used his concern about drug use as a competitive tactic lessened its effectiveness, and only enabled Chinese nationalists to once more don the mantle of victim. Any chance for reform around issues like drugs in sport got caught in the wake of wounded egos and jingoistic pride.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Ai Weiwei is the cultural hero that China needs

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 16 December 2015
    3 Comments

    Ai Weiwei might be more Dada than Dao and a hirsute satirist of Beijing's rulers, but he is no mere trending hashtag. Since his birth in 1957, his life history has moulded him, and given him the courage to speak up for a reformed China. And while he might appear the court jester that a simplistic West wants, he is in fact a clever and pragmatic political operator in his own world pursuing a rights agenda in a systematic, constructive and humorous way, often through artistic production.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Communist China keeps a grip on the gun

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 15 October 2012
    3 Comments

    Many people know Mao's famous dictum, 'Power comes from the barrel of the gun'. Fewer people know the second part: that 'the Party must control the gun'. The Party could allow last month's street protests because they unified the people against a hated enemy in Japan. But the protests were carefully controlled.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Chinese burn for 'political' Games

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 05 August 2008
    4 Comments

    The torch relay protests unexpectedly strengthened aggressive nationalism, as the Chinese people swung behind the government and its Olympic aspirations. Sport and politics will combine in weeks to come, making for interesting viewing.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bracing for the five-ring circus

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 27 April 2006

    The Chinese people are conscious of the immense work involved in bringing a ‘New Beijing’ into being before the ‘Great Olympics’

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