The Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) 中华全球研究中心, in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, is funded by the Australian Commonwealth Government. It was established in April 2010 following then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s George E Morrison Lecture on Australia and China in the World, in which he called for:

A place where scholars, thinkers and policy specialists can engage in an across-the-board approach that brings history, culture, literature, philosophy and cultural studies perspectives into active engagement with those working on public policy, the environment, social change, economics, trade, foreign policy, defence policy and strategic analysis.

(The full transcript of the speech Australia and China in the World is available here. (A Chinese language version is also available 中文版.)

Building on this original vision, CIW aims to be one of the leading international institutions for Chinese Studies, encompassing all scholarship that furthers our understanding of the Chinese world — the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora — on its own terms and through its own languages, addressing both its traditions and contemporary developments in a rapidly changing world.

CIW is committed to pursuing multi-disciplinary research that draws on the best traditions of both the humanities and social sciences, and that engages with the policy-making community of bureaucrats, diplomats and politicians who sit on our doorstep in Canberra. The Centre is also committed to sharing the diversity of China-related scholarship at the ANU with the broader public, nationally and internationally.

Between 2011 and 2017, CIW operated as a stand-alone research centre within the ANU. In 2017, a number of staff movements in ANU’s Chinese Studies community led the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Brian Schmidt, to propose an External Review, focusing primarily on CIW but encompassing all of the China-related research and teaching in the university’s seven colleges. The Review called for CIW to ‘reimagine’ its role as ANU’s China hub, fostering cross-campus, national and international research collaborations that are organically linked to the intellectual agendas of scholars across the university.

This reimagining is well underway and, in combination with the generous support committed by the Vice-Chancellor for four new appointments, will ensure that the ANU’s world-class reputation for Chinese Studies is sustained in the decades ahead.