Australia should resist the march of autocracy, but there will be consequences | Jonathan Pearlman

The old world order is ending. The challenge for Australia is that the driving force behind the change is China, a country so crucial to our future in Asia

In June 1987, a group of world leaders met in Venice to plan global economic policy for the 21st century. The leaders represented seven of the eight wealthiest countries in the world; the Soviet Union was excluded.

Addressing the summit, US president Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an example of how not to run a country". But he was less hostile towards China, which was then the world's ninth-largest economy, just ahead of Spain.