With its per capita income surpassing US$10,000, China has now drawn up ambitious plans to further lift its income to the level of developed countries. Yet various constraints need to be overcome if China is to build on the achievements of the last 40 years and further boost its growth potential. Besides these constraints, the year 2020 saw human societies hit heavily by the COVID-19 pandemic and the global economy caught off guard and dipped into recessions caused by lockdown measures for controlling the spread of the pandemic.

Arising from the ‘Placing Gender’ workshop held in Melbourne in 2018, this collection brings together contributions that demonstrate different approaches to undertaking gender analysis in environmental history. Focusing on non-Indigenous women and men in the Anglo-world from the mid-nineteenth century, some adopt new tools to excavate familiar terrain, while others listen closely to voices that have rarely been heard in the field.

Heightened geopolitical rivalry and the pushback against globalisation have challenged the multilateral trading system in Asia and globally. This East Asia Forum Quarterly examines how the region is navigating the new trade landscape through the COVID pandemic. For Asia, fixing a broken WTO is top priority. The resilience of supply chains, the foreign investment environment, international economic coercion, the digital economic revolution, and the emergence of a new multipolar are other issues put under scrutiny in this issue.

The year 2020 was marked by a series of rolling crises. The Australian wildfires at the start of the year were a catastrophic sign of the global climate crisis. Xi Jinping’s announcement in September that the People’s Republic of China would become carbon neutral by 2060 could help alleviate the crisis, but China has to fix its coal problem first. The big story was, of course, the global COVID-19 pandemic.

This festschrift celebrates the extensive contribution John Wanna has made to the research and practice of politics, policy and public administration.

It includes both personal acknowledgements of his work and substantial essays on the issues that he focused most closely upon during his academic career: budgeting and financial management, politics, and public policy and administration.

Few American administrations in living memory face as arduous a set of domestic and external policy challenges as that led by President Joseph R. Biden. What faces the new team in Washington is nothing short of herculean: arrest the scourge of COVID-19, grow the economy and begin once more to address the historic grievances of racial injustice and socioeconomic inequality. How it handles those tasks will profoundly affect its capacity to prosecute an effective foreign policy.

China’s increased global engagements in recent years have been the source of unending controversies. While public attention generally focuses on geopolitical, economic or even environmental issues, labour also plays an important part in emerging narratives surrounding the ‘spectre of global China’. The media in countries that have received a significant influx of investment from mainland China has often complained about ‘invasions’ of Chinese workers, who are allegedly snatching away job opportunities from local workers.

When it comes to policymaking, public servants have traditionally learned ‘on the job’, with practical experience and tacit knowledge valued over theory-based learning and academic analysis. Yet increasing numbers of public servants are undertaking policy training through postgraduate qualifications and/or through short courses in policy training.

COVID-19 has spotlighted, like no other event, the importance of the ascendance of China in global affairs. This issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly examines how China is changing and why that is important. Contributors offer perspectives on China's economic transformation and the evolution of the political, military, technological, environmental and strategic dimensions of China under President Xi Jinping. The Asian Review discusses the future of Kashmir, human rights in Southeast Asia and global governance reform.

In this collection, 17 leading scholars based in Solomon Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and China analyse key dimensions of the changing relationship between China and the Pacific Islands and explore the strategic, economic and diplomatic implications for regional actors.