Writer
Geoff Raby
Geoff Raby AO was Australia’s ambassador to China (2007–11); ambassador to APEC (2003–5); and ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (1998–2001). He is former chair of VisAsia at the Art Gallery of NSW and former chair of Western Sydney University’s Australia–China Institute of Arts and Culture. Raby was awarded the Order of Australia in 2019 for services to Australia–China relations and to international trade. He is an independent company director and author of China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New World Order, MUP, 2020.
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Albanese’s China visit: an ear to the future
Fifty years’ ago, the grainy black and white image of Whitlam with his ear pressed against the listening wall at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, led to the joke: What is being said to Gough? Answer: ‘Mei you!’ The ubiquities response then by Chinese service staff in restaurants and stores in those day, loosely, ‘don’t have Continue reading »
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Cheng Lei’s release a win for diplomacy
Make no mistake, had the Australian Government not changed last year, Chen Lei would still be languishing in her miserable detention cell, denied access to her children, relatives, and friends. Continue reading »
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Another brick laid building the new order
The recently concluded summit of the five member states of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) agreed to expand membership to include from next January Saudi Arabia, Iran, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the UAE. Western media and commentators’ responses have been a farrago of sneering at the unlikely hodgepodge of countries that Continue reading »
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Muddled on the Middle Kingdom
Anthony Albanese needs to see for himself what the Chinese economic miracle looks like close up. Continue reading »
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China is going to be the great winner from Putin’s strife
Russia’s failed attempt to make Ukraine into a buffer state is only helping China’s statecraft on its own western borders. Continue reading »
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Why a different world order is already here
US primacy is being replaced by two orders led by Washington and Beijing. Canberra’s job is to make the US understand what has happened. Continue reading »
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Penny Wong and Paul Keating need to have this vital debate
Australia now has an adventurous and activist foreign policy again. But it has not answered the questions that the former prime minister raises. Continue reading »
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Australian journalists in China: Send them back!
In August, it will be three years since Australia’s China-based correspondents were harried out of China. In an extraordinary over-reaction, the ABC, Fairfax, and News Corp closed their offices in Beijing and Shanghai. Continue reading »
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China’s big foreign policy plays leave Australia in the cold
The Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress in October last year may be seen with the efflux of time as a watershed event, not so much for the extension of Xi Ping’s tenure in the job, but for subsequent sharp policy resets. Continue reading »
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China: decoupling from the West and winning the long game
With the re-opening of China and with the ending of Covid restrictions, a new confidence seems to be surging through the country. While the next two years are seen to be a particularly dangerous time, with the real prospect of armed conflict with the US, beyond that it is felt that China’s time will have Continue reading »
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Best of 2022: Australia’s China threat industry led by Sydney Morning Herald takes a hit
Above a picture of a tired looking Xi Jinping – taken at the G20 – the Sydney Morning Herald ran the headline: The Face of Capitulation. It was as banal as it was predictable. It was for a Peter Hartcher story that crowed at having slayed the dragon (sub-text: this was Hartcher’s personal victory). Continue reading »
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Penny Wong should go to Beijing for the 50th Anniversary
On 21 December, it will be exactly 50 years since a joint communique establishing diplomatic relations between Australia and the People’s Republic of China was signed in Paris by each country’s Ambassador. To mark the event, it would be normal practice for a ministerial visit in either direction to occur. China is big on commemorative Continue reading »
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Australia’s China threat industry led by Sydney Morning Herald takes a hit
Above a picture of a tired looking Xi Jinping – taken at the G20 – the Sydney Morning Herald ran the headline: The Face of Capitulation. It was as banal as it was predictable. It was for a Peter Hartcher story that crowed at having slayed the dragon (sub-text: this was Hartcher’s personal victory). Continue reading »
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Finding a way on China ties
Beijing and Canberra remain deadlocked in a trade war. But there is a step-by-step means for both parties to climb down gracefully. Continue reading »
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Defence Strategic Review-Prometheus bound – China the constrained superpower
Several contributors to this series have argued that China should not be seen as a military threat to Australia. Their arguments are based on historical, political, and cultural grounds, or all three. Henry Kissinger in his 2011 book On China concluded similarly. Continue reading »
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The China threat industry and journalists who had never been to China, became sudden overnight experts
The Albanese Government seems unwilling to provide leadership to the community on how to understand the rise of China and as many qualified military analysts have pointed out, Australia now faces up to a twenty-year gap in our defence capability. So much for the threat. Continue reading »
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Anthony Albanese must get real about China
Penny Wong is professional and diligent, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese needs to change his advisers on China. Continue reading »
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China’s elite gag on ‘Vlad the Toxic’
China’s top people see a successful country standing tall in the world. Now their leader is tarring it all by association with the wrecker and war criminal in Moscow. Continue reading »
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Fraser Oration excerpt: Foreign policy leadership must go beyond stoking fear
Today’s Australia is hard to recognise to that which Fraser had helped shape. Today our world view is narrower, more fearful, inward looking, and mean. Continue reading »
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The China threat industry hasn’t turned up any bodies
If it’s true that Beijing is intent on subverting liberal democracies, why haven’t Chinese agents of influence been exposed in Australia? Continue reading »
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Lv Shun: The Chinese port where a new world order emerged
Before World War I, a Japanese victory over Russia in the Chinese port of Lv Shun was the first such victory by an Asian power over a European power. Continue reading »
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A Sino-US thaw would leave Australia stranded on a rock
As the US talks more about co-operation with China than competition, Australia’s lack of vision on China is on full display. Continue reading »
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China’s trade bid a chance to mend fences
Beijing can’t be happy with where its Australian relations have ended up. But Canberra should be wary of overplaying its hand. Continue reading »
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Xi Jinping wards off China-style populism
The focus on egalitarianism and crackdown on conspicuous consumption is just Beijing’s way of dealing with the inequalities associated with globalisation that have disrupted Western politics. Continue reading »
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Beijing’s delta barricades an echo of 1970s Berlin
It feels as if COVID-19 is lapping at the city gates. Nanjing is locked down for mandatory testing of its entire population. Wuhan, where it all began, is under severe restrictions. Stories of outbreaks are coming from different parts of the country – Chengdu in the far south-west, Dalian in the north-east, Tianjin near Beijing. Continue reading »
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China grievances conflated into demands.
Peter Hartcher on the ABC presented China’s list of grievances as if they were some kind of official demarche made on the Australian Government. He intones repeatedly about these ‘demands’ as if they had the status of Martin Luther’s 95 theses nailed to the chapel door at Wittenberg University which started the Reformation. That is Continue reading »
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The Chinese Communist Party: does it stay or does it go?
Contemporary China cannot be comprehended without understanding the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). With 85 million members it represents a tiny share of the total population (1.4 billion) but is the world’s largest political party. Its organisation, structure and internal discipline ensure it is the spinal cord of governance of the People’s Republic Continue reading »
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Morrison-Naked in Cornwall with ‘allies’ backfilling the markets we have lost in China
Far from being a vindication of the Government’s China policies, the G7 plus 4 meeting highlighted the abject failure of Australia’s reckless foreign policy towards China. Australia alone of the 11 nations present had no official contact with China and significant parts of its trade suspended, which others at the meeting are busily back filling. Continue reading »
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The Five Eyes does not have our back.
It is risible to see the Australian Foreign Minister setting off to New Zealand to pull the Kiwis into line over their lack of support for attempts by the so-called Five Eyes of Anglo Saxon countries to pressure China. Continue reading »
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Why Australia and the West suffer from Sinophrenia. China, the bubble that never pops.
On the economic front, China has consistently confounded the pessimists. As China grows and grows, critics can’t decide whether the Asian giant is about to collapse or is set to take us over. Continue reading »
