Unlocking Asia: CPA Australia urges bold action to boost national capability.
12 November 2025 AIMN Editorial, https://theaimn.net/unlocking-asia-cpa-australia-urges-bold-action-to-boost-national-capability/
Australian businesses are missing significant investment and innovation opportunities in Asia.- Education, business and professional exchange programs must be expanded.
- Speaking from experience – CPA Australia has nearly 50,000 members in the region.
One of the world’s leading accounting bodies, CPA Australia, is urging the Federal government to take bold steps to strengthen Australia’s Asia capability, warning that Australian businesses are missing out on significant opportunities in the region.
In a submission to the government’s inquiry into building Australia’s Asia capability, CPA Australia provides four key recommendations aimed at deepening Australia’s engagement with Asia through education, business and cultural exchange.
Rebecca Keppel-Jones, Chief Member Operations Officer at CPA Australia, says many Australian businesses, particularly SMEs, remain domestically focused and are not capitalising on opportunities in Asia.
“Asia is central to Australia’s future prosperity. To remain competitive, we must build Asia capability from the classroom to the boardroom,” Ms Keppel Jones said.
“With Asia home to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Australia risks falling behind unless it invests in Asia capability now. We need more investment into existing programs, such as the New Colombo Plan, to improve Australians’ understanding of Asia.”
CPA Australia is proud to have maintained a strong presence in Asia for more than 70 years. It now represents nearly 50,000 members in mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and the UAE.
“Australia must better leverage its people-to-people connections and professional networks to unlock economic potential,” Ms Keppel-Jones said.
CPA Australia’s four key recommendations:
- Expanding Asia-focused training for SMEs to improve business readiness and regional engagement.
- Showcasing Australian success stories in Asia through a government-supported case study library to inspire and educate.
- Increasing scholarships and professional placements for young Australians to study and work in Asia.
- Revitalising Asian language and cultural education in schools and universities to reverse declining enrolments and build long-term regional literacy.
“As global dynamics shift, our ability to engage with Asia is more critical than ever. We need to ensure Australia’s workforce is globally competitive,” Ms Keppel-Jones said. “We are ready to work with government, educators and industry to turn these recommendations into action.”
The submission highlights CPA Australia’s active contributions to regional policy development, education and professional exchange, including a reciprocal work placement exchange program with Malaysia.
Eligible CPA Australia members can enjoy temporary work placements in Malaysia as part of a broader Young Professionals Exchange Program organised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The exchange program is designed to enhance business engagement between Australia and its Southeast Asia partners and is available in Malaysia first, before being rolled out to other Southeast Asian markets.
CPA Australia’s thought leadership initiatives across Asian nations include its annual Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey and Business Technology Report.
US Plans for China Blockade Continue Taking Shape
Brian Berletic. https://sovereignista.com/ November 11, 2025
What was once a theoretical discussion in U.S. military journals about blockading China’s oil supply is now steadily turning into a tangible, multi-layered strategy aimed at containing Beijing and preserving American global dominance.
In 2018, the US Naval War College Review published a paper titled, “A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China—Tactically Tempting But Strategically Flawed.” It was only one of many over the preceding years discussing the details of implementing a maritime blockade as part of a larger encirclement and containment strategy of China.
At first glance the paper looks like US policy thinking considered, then moved past the idea of blockading China. Instead, the paper merely listed a number of obstacles impeding such a strategy in 2018—obstacles that would need to be removed if such a strategy were to be viable in the near or intermediate future—and obstacles US policymakers have been removing ever since.
More contemporary papers published, including those among the pages of the US Naval Institute (here and here), have updated and refined not just an emerging strategy to theoretically confront and contain China, but a plan of action taking tangible shape.
Cold War Continuity of Agenda
Throughout the Cold War and ever since its conclusion, the US’ singular foreign policy objective has been to maintain American hegemony over the globe established at the end of the World Wars. A 1992 New York Times article titled “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring no Rivals Develop” made it clear the US would actively prevent the emergence of any nation or groups of nations from contesting American primacy worldwide.
In recent years this has included preventing the reemergence of Russia as well as the rise of China. It also involves surrounding both nations with arcs of chaos and/or confrontation—either through the destruction of neighboring countries through political subversion, or the capture of these nations by the US and their transformation into battering rams to be used against both nations.
Ukraine is an extreme example of this policy in action. The US is also transforming both the Philippines and the Chinese island province of Taiwan into similar proxies vis-à-vis China.
Beyond this, the US seeks to prevent the majority of nations currently outside US dominion from joining with and contributing to the multipolar world order proposed by nations like Russia and China.
This strategy of coercion, destabilization, political capture, proxy war, and outright war has been used to target both Russia and China directly, their neighbors, and a growing list of nations far beyond their near abroad.
The US is demonstrating a clear, unwavering commitment to a multi-layered strategy of containment, coercion, and confrontation designed not just to prepare for conflict, but to make that conflict both inevitable and successful for the singular goal of maintaining global American hegemony
Strengths and Weaknesses of American Primacy
Enabling this strategy is America’s global-spanning military presence facilitated by its “alliance network.” This network of obedient client regimes both hosts US military forces and serves as an extension of US military, economic, and increasingly military-industrial power. US “allies” often pursue US geopolitical objectives at their own expense.
Again, an explicit example of this is Ukraine, which is locked in a proxy war with Russia, threatening its own self-preservation as a means of—as US policymakers described in a 2019 RAND Corporation paper—“extending Russia.”
While conflicts like that unfolding in Ukraine or the US-backed military build-up in the Philippines or on Taiwan has exposed a critical weakness of the United States—its lagging military industrial capacity vis-à-vis either Russia or China, let alone both nations—the US has demonstrated the ability to compensate through geopolitical agility the multipolar world is struggling to address.
This includes the ability of the US to mire a targeted nation in conflict in one location while moving resources across its global-spanning military-logistical networks toward pressure points in other locations, overextending the targeted nation and achieving success in at least one of the multiple pressure points targeted. The US successfully did this through its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which tied Russia up sufficiently for the US to finally succeed in the overthrow of the Syrian government, where Russian forces had previously thwarted US-sponsored proxy war and regime change.
It also includes the ability of the US to target partner or potential partner nations of Russia and China through economic, political, or even military means in ways Russia and China are unable to defend against—including through political subversion facilitated through America’s near monopoly over global information space.
These advantages the US still possesses also make potential maritime blockades very difficult for Russia and China to defend against.
Russian Energy Shipments as a Beta Test for Blockading China
France recently announced seizing a ship accused of being part of Russia’s “ghost” or “shadow” fleet—ships refusing to heed unilateral sanctions placed by the US and its client states on Russian energy shipments.
This was just one of several first steps toward what may materialize into a wider and more aggressive interdiction or blockade of Russian energy shipments. This may also be a beta test for implementing a long-desired maritime blockade on China…………………
Setting the Stage for a Blockade of China Has Already Begun
The 2018 US Naval War College Review paper lays out the realities of a potential blockade against China in 2018, noting the various opportunities and risks associated with such a strategy…………………………………………………………………………………………..
Since the paper was published, the US has pursued both continued preparations for a maritime blockade of China itself, as well as build up a number of regional proxies to wage war against China, as the US wages proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and, increasingly, through the rest of Europe……………………………………………………………………..
To understand Washington’s strategy toward China, one should not look to the political rhetoric of “retreat” or “homeland defense” in the Western Hemisphere, but rather to the tangible actions taking place across the Asia-Pacific and beyond—the meticulous encirclement of China’s periphery, the sustained attacks on its critical overland energy and trade links (BRI/CPEC), the calculated incapacitation of Russia as a potential energy supplier, and the establishment of local proxy forces (the Philippines, Japan, separatists on Taiwan) prepared to wage war.
Far from an abstract or “flawed” concept relegated to think-tank papers, the maritime oil blockade—or wider general blockade against China—is being incrementally prepared in real-time. By systematically removing the very obstacles noted in the 2018 Naval War College Review paper, the US is demonstrating a clear, unwavering commitment to a multi-layered strategy of containment, coercion, and confrontation designed not just to prepare for conflict, but to make that conflict both inevitable and successful for the singular goal of maintaining global American hegemony. https://sovereignista.com/2025/11/11/us-plans-for-china-blockade-continue-taking-shape/
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