Dr Geoff Raby AO, Australian Ambassador to China 2007-2011, Chairman, Geoff Raby & Associates, will Address the National Press Club of Australia on "Great Game On: China’s ascendency in Eurasia and the West’s Chussia Anxiety".
China has incrementally, but deliberately, built its influence and dominance over Central Asia and beyond that to Eurasia more broadly. Its inexorable economic growth and, recently, Putin’s follies in the Ukraine have hastened China’s emergence as the preeminent power in the Eurasian heartland. China now finds itself in a similar geostrategic place as the US did at the end of the nineteenth century when it consolidated its borders and was able to establish hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. For the first time, China no longer need fear for its frontier security, other than from endemic Islamic fundamentalism. Rather than an ‘axis of authoritarian’ states between China and Russia, Russia is fast becoming a vassal state to China. In the West, the Chussia Anxiety is therefore misplaced. Far more important is China’s capacity, like the US a century ago, to project power globally. What will it do and what will it mean for regional geostrategic balance and for Australia’s place in the world?
BIO:
Geoff Raby was Australia’s Ambassador to China from 2007-11, during which he visited all provinces in China officially. He served in Beijing as First Secretary (Economic) and then Counsellor (Economic), 1986-91. He was Ambassador to the WTO in Geneva, Ambassador to APEC, and Deputy Secretary, 2003-07. He was also head of the Trade Policy Issues Division of the OECD, Paris, 1993-95. He is a non-executive independent director of ASX listed-companies Yancoal, where he chairs the Health, Safety, Environment and Community Committee, and sits on the Board of the Gavan Foundaton.
His most recent book, Great Game On: the contest for central Asia and global supremacy, was published by Melbourne University Press on 12 November 2024. His previous book was China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the World Order (MUP Nov 2020). He regularly contributes op eds and travel writing to the Australian Financial Review. He holds a PhD in economics. He was awarded the Order of Australia (AO) in June 2019 for services to Australia-China bilateral relations and to multilateral trade.
