There was an intriguing launch of an important book yesterday

China Story Yearbook 2020: Crisis is edited by Jane Golley, (ANU) and Linda Jaivin (ANU), with Sharon Strange and published (open-access, on-line) by the excellent ANU Press.

The fascination is in the content. The book presents comprehensive assessments by 29 experts of China’s politics and society, diplomacy and economy and the lived-experience of China’s people in the first year of COVID-19. And it does not duck the year’s crises in Australia-China relations.

The chapters CMM read are the work of obvious experts, rich in information and analysis and measured in-tone. There is a great deal that may not amuse Chinese Government officials but this is a work of scholarship, not rhetoric.

The intrigue is in the launch, at the National Press Club yesterday. Wang Xining, Deputy Head of Mission at the PRC embassy in Canberra spoke. He hopped into the Turnbull Government for banning telco Huawei from the 5G network – but turning up for a significant book including well-argued criticism of his government is way better than not.