My China Story: Kevin Hobgood-Brown AM (Catch up Online)

The event was held on Thursday 20 October 2022.

The Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC) has launched a distinctive conversation series entitled My China Story. The aim is to build an understanding of multifaceted China through sharing lived experiences and insightful stories in China by Australians from a wide range of fields and professions. For Episode Four, we are excited and privileged to have Kevin Hobgood-Brown AM, one of a small group of international lawyers to work in Beijing in the early 1980s, to tell his stories and experiences of living and working in China in a range of roles and with various sectors.

Arriving in Shanghai on a coastal freighter from Hong Kong in July 1983, Kevin began his first three and a half years of living in Beijing, eventually departing China in January 1987 overland from Lhasa to Kathmandu. While in Beijing, Kevin taught on the law faculty of Peking University and worked in the Beijing office of a San Francisco-based law firm. As a law firm partner, he had postings in Beijing, San Francisco, Taipei, and Sydney. Kevin has been based in Sydney since 1996 when he moved to Sydney from Beijing. Over the past 39 years, he has lived in China on four occasions and has travelled to China numerous times each year, until travel was shut down by Covid-19.

Kevin is currently the Managing Director of HHK Advisory Pty Ltd, a corporate advisory firm focussed on mineral resources projects involving Australia and China. He has also been the Chair of the Foundation for Australian Studies in China (FASIC), a non-profit foundation created in 2011 to support the BHP Chair of Australian Studies at Peking University and to work closely with the 39 Australian Studies Centres located at universities and research institutes throughout China. Kevin served as the Deputy Chair of the Australian government’s Australia-China Council for six years. He was the national President of the Australia China Business Council from 2005 through 2008. He is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the China Studies Centre of Sydney University and served on the Advisory Board of the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture at Western Sydney University.

Kevin was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 2016 for his contributions to Australia-China relations, tertiary education, international business development and natural resources sector.

In this Episode, Kevin reflected on his years teaching at Peking University, on observing China’s reforms evolve over 39 years and on his abandoned dream to have tried every Sichuan restaurant in Beijing. This Episode was opened by Emeritus Professor David Walker AM.

Biographies

Kevin Hobgood-Brown AM Kevin Hobgood-Brown AM is currently the Managing Director of HHK Advisory Pty Ltd, a corporate advisory firm focussed on mineral resources projects involving Australia and China. Kevin served as the Deputy Chair of the Australian government’s Australia-China Council for six years from 2007 to 2013. He was the national President of the Australia China Business Council from 2005 to 2008. He is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and served on the Advisory Board of the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture at Western Sydney University. Kevin is the Chair of the Foundation for Australian Studies in China (FASIC), a non-profit foundation created in 2011 to support the BHP Chair of Australian Studies at Peking University and to support the 39 Australian Studies Centres located at universities throughout China. Kevin was an international law firm partner for 18 years, in which capacity he had postings in Beijing, San Francisco, Taipei and Sydney. Kevin taught at the Law School of Peking University from 1983 to 1987 and worked in the Beijing office of a San Francisco-based law firm. Kevin moved to Sydney from Beijing in 1996, where he has been based ever since. Over the past 39 years, Kevin has lived in China on four occasions and has travelled to China numerous times each year, until travel was shut down by Covid-19. Kevin has Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctor degrees from the United States and a Diploma in Chinese Law. He is a member of the California and Texas Bar Associations and the Law Society of New South Wales. Kevin was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 2016 for his contributions to Australia-China relations, tertiary education, international business development and natural resources sector.

David Walker AM Emeritus Professor David Walker AM has written extensively on Australia’s responses to rising Asia from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. His books on this relationship include: Anxious Nation: Australia and the rise of Asia, 1850-1939 and Stranded Nation: White Australia in an Asian region. His memoir: Not Dark yet: a personal history was translated into Chinese by Professor Li Yao and published by the Peoples’ Literature Publishing House, Beijing. He has recently written a dual memoir with Li Yao: Happy Together: bridging the Australia China divide (Melbourne University Press, 2022). David Walker was the inaugural BHP Chair of Australian Studies at Peking University from 2013 to 2016 and is a Director and Board Member of the Foundation for Australian Studies in China (FASIC).