Geoff Raby will be in conversation with Allan Behm on the updated edition of his book China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order and his recent publication, Great Game On. The contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy.

China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order highlights that the US-dominated world order has been replaced by a multipolar order, but its closest allies such as Australia seek to retain American primacy, adding dangerously to heightened geopolitical competition between the dominant and the ascendant power, China.

Diplomatically, Australia is forced to navigate an increasingly unfamiliar world where the guarantor of its security is no longer the sole dominant power, while China remains its most important economic partner. Is Australia agile enough to walk the fine line of supporting US primacy in the Asia–Pacific while providing a bulwark against China’s ambitions? In China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order Geoff Raby believes something has to give – and unpacks the ramifications for Australia.

Great Game On is the story of the remaking of the world order Historically, China has sought its security by building dominant relationships with pliant states that accept its pre-eminence. Its expanding role and influence in Central Asia has been as incremental and piecemeal as it has been deliberate. With its emergence as the leading power in Eurasia based on its inexorable economic rise and Putin's folly in Ukraine,

China has been released from its past existential anxieties about land-based threats from Eurasia. It now has the chance to project its power globally, as the US did from the early twentieth century when it became the dominant power in the western hemisphere. What threats and risks must China address? And what happens when China becomes the established, stable, dominant power.

Dr Geoff Raby AO was Australia’s ambassador to China (2007–11); ambassador to APEC (2003–05); and ambassador to the World Trade Organization (1998–2001). Since leaving government service he has been a regular columnist on China and Eurasia for The Australian Financial Review, travel writer and a non-executive, independent company director. Raby was awarded the Order of Australia in 2019 for services to Australia–China relations and international trade.

Allan Behm, Director, International & Security Affairs Program at the Australia Institute, Canberra, specialises in international and security policy development, political and security risk evaluation, policy analysis and development, and negotiating the policy/politics interface. Following a career spanning nearly 30 years in the Australian Public Service, he was Chief of Staff to Minister for Climate Change and Industry Greg Combet (2009 to 2013) and senior advisor to the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Penny Wong (2017–19).

The vote of thanks will be given by Professor Jane Golley, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics at the Crawford School of Public Policy ANU .

Books are available for signing from 5.30pm and again after the event.

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