Richard McGregor, senior fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute explored the complex and fractious relationship between the US and China and its influence on our region. Watch the #PerspectivesAsia seminar online.

The superpowers are not only engaged in a tense geopolitical contest, but are also battling each other over trade and technology, with repercussions for America’s regional allies, including Australia. Increasingly, such contests are being transformed into zero-sum games, with one country’s economic gain considered a loss by the other. For countries such as Australia, these trends are deeply worrying because they undermine the global trade system.

Richard McGregor is a senior fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute. He is a former journalist and author who has won numerous awards for his reporting in China and East Asia. Richard is an expert on the Chinese political system – his book, The Party, on the inner-workings of the Chinese Communist Party, was called a “masterpiece” by The Economist. His latest book on Sino-Japanese relations, Asia’s Reckoning: China, Japan and the Fate of US in the Pacific Century, was called “shrewd and knowing” by the Wall Street Journal and the “best book of the year” by the Literary Review in the UK. He was the former Bureau Chief of Financial Times in Beijing and Washington D.C. Richard has also worked for the BBC, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the International Herald Tribune, The Australian and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and has been based in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Taipei.

Perspectives:Asia is presented by the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University and the Australian Centre of Asia-Pacific Art (ACAPA) at QAGOMA. Previous Perspectives:Asia seminars are also available online.

Images: Chloe Callistemon