Daniel Kane (Chinese: 康丹; pinyin: Kāng Dān;[1] 25 January 1948 – 16 April 2021) was an Australian diplomat and linguist,[2] and one of the world's foremost authorities on the extinct Jurchen and Khitan languages and their scripts.

Bereaved of his father when young, circumstances of extreme poverty[4] constrained him to cut his education short and enter the work force at 16.

He left school and joined a bank, working as a teller at a branch in Lygon Street, Carlton.

There the then Dean of Arts at the university noticed he had a remarkable talent for languages, appearing to speak to Greek and Italian clients fluently[4] - he had picked up Italian, for one, listening and talking to the sons of immigrants at school in his preteen years - and invited him to finish high school and take up studies at the nearby university.

He joined the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs in 1976 and was posted to Beijing for four years (1976-1980) during the early part of the reform period and particularly the period of the Democracy Wall which he rose early to read every morning and whose unsurpassed knowledge of which formed the basis of much of what was known outside China of that movement.