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Rowan Callick is a double Walkley Award winner and a Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year. He has worked and lived in Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong and Beijing.

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Flowers are seen placed around portraits of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian Arctic prison, at a makeshift memorial in front of the former Russian consulate in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, on February 20, 2024. Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya accused Russian President Putin of killing her husband and vowed to continue Navalny's work. (Photo by AFP)

Navalny’s martyrdom reflects new age of thugs and dictators

Faced with death, Alexei Navalny’s refusal to bow to Putin exemplifies hope and resilience unique to a modern martyrdom perpetrated by a totalitarian regime.

Rowan Callick

CommentaryCommentary

Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese with Prime Minister of Tuvalu Kausea Natano signing a treaty that will safeguard Tuvalu’s future while respecting sovereignty to be known as the ‘Falepili Union’. Flags of Australia and Tuvalu. Photo: X

Why Xi’s play for Pacific influence demands more than ‘business and strategy’

Beijing is ratcheting up its tools of persuasion in the Pacific. It’s time Australia’s engagment in the region moves beyond good business and strategy.

Rowan Callick

INQUIRERInquirer

This picture taken on January 7, 2024, shows Huang Jie (L), Kaohsiung city councillor and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative candidate who is a staunch supporter of LGBTQ rights, being introduced on stage by DPP presidential candidate Lai Ching-te during a DPP campaign rally in Kaohsiung, a week before the presidential election. (Photo by Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP)

For voters, it’s the economy (and housing and energy)

China’s threat of annexation wasn’t the major issue determining how Taiwanese voted.

Rowan Callick

THE AUSTRALIAN’S AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEARNation

Thursday 18th January 2024. The Australian.Cheng Lei in her home in Melbourne, Australia with her children Alex (left) and Ava (right) and her mother Hua.Photograph by Arsineh Houspian.

Epitome of grace, courage and the very best of Australia

In a time of turbulence and anxiety, The Australian has chosen Cheng Lei as its 2023 Australian of the Year: a person of exceptional resilience, articulacy, and strength of values.

Rowan Callick

commentaryCommentary

This pool photograph distributed by Russian state owned agency Sputnik shows Chinese President Xi Jinping attending a meeting with Russian Prime Minister in Beijing on December 20, 2023. (Photo by Dmitry ASTAKHOV / POOL / AFP)

Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative is in strife — now it’s time for Xi’s BRI 2.0

The Belt and Road Initiative is running out of money and vast debt remains. But in 2024 BRI Mark 2 will return other dividends to Xi Jinping’s China.

Rowan Callick

CommentaryCommentary

(FILES) In this file photo taken on June 16, 2020, millionaire media tycoon Jimmy Lai, 72, poses during an interview with AFP at the Next Digital offices in Hong Kong. - Lai, a Hong Kong media mogul and one of the city's most prominent pro-democracy figures, was arrested on August 10, 2020 under Beijing's new national security law, a close aide and a police source said. (Photo by Anthony WALLACE / AFP)

Spare a thought for Jimmy Lai, a true patriot of Hong Kong

The two most brilliant people I have interviewed in my career, have both been Chinese – Nobel Peace Prize winning philosopher Liu Xiaobo, and business and media genius Jimmy Lai.

Rowan Callick

COMMENTARYInquirer

BEIJING, Feb. 25, 2021 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, meets with role models in China's poverty alleviation fight and relatives of those model poverty fighters who lost their lives in the country's anti-poverty cause before a grand gathering to mark the nation's poverty alleviation accomplishments and honor model poverty fighters at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 25, 2021. (Photo by Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via Getty) (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi via Getty Images)

10 tips for how Albanese should approach Xi talks

When Gough Whitlam visited China 50 years ago, he described it as ‘a sentimental as well as a diplomatic journey’. That was another world.

Rowan Callick

InquirerInquirer

CORRECTION / This handout photograph taken on October 11, 2023 and released by Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade shows Australian journalist Cheng Lei speaking on a phone upon her arrival at the airport in Melbourne. China has released Australian journalist Cheng Lei after more than three years, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on October 11, adding she was freed from detention and reunited with her two young children in Melbourne. (Photo by Sarah HODGES / Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) / AFP) / --- RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT

Beijing keeps its secrets as Cheng Lei walks in sunshine

It’s unlikely that the true circumstances of the journalist’s arrest will ever be revealed, but fears over further peremptory detentions remain.

Rowan Callick

commentaryPolitics

This handout photograph taken on October 11, 2023 and released by Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade shows Australian journalist Cheng Lei upon her arrival at the airport in Melbourne. China has released Australian journalist Cheng Lei after more than three years, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on October 11, adding she was freed from detention and reunited with her two young children in Melbourne. (Photo by Sarah HODGES / Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) / Australia Global Alumni / AFP) / --- RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT

After lonely years in a grim Chinese jail, the joy of home

Whether Cheng Lei was being held as a form of political hostage may now never be clearly revealed, but the unanimity of outrage about her detention may help ensure that such a tactic is not repeated.

Rowan Callick

InquirerInquirer

Tribal fighters in Papua New Guinea's Enga Province show of their strength, with many armed with machetes. Picture: Facebook

Tribal warfare takes a brutal modern twist

Papua New Guinea’s Highlands are racked by violence as tribal warfare resurges horrifically.

Rowan Callick

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/rowan-callick/page/3