Geoff Raby
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.
Geoff's recent articles
12 April 2025
Is China really the main threat to Australia's security?
What are the nature of the security threats Australia faces? How valid are the assumptions that have informed our economic, foreign and defence policy?
27 March 2025
Great power diplomacy in the era of Trump 2.0
With Trump in the White House, geopolitics has returned to the realm of great power relations.
13 February 2025
China’s digital sputnik moment
DeepSeek was virtually unknown when the year began. It is now shaking global stock markets and being called a sputnik moment for the US. Last month, xiao hong shi (Little Red Book) also emerged from seemingly nowhere, as US TikToc users began migrating en masse to this Chinese social media site in anticipation of TikTok being shut down. These follow a string of announcements by China’s digital tech giants on new developments in high-end semiconductor chips.
9 November 2024
Trump: a reality check for Australia
On Tuesday the American people spoke with clarity and determination. They voted for jobs, secure borders and to be able to look to the future in an uncertain world with confidence and optimism. What we know from Trump 1.0 is that he his true to his word.
7 November 2024
The China Threat has now become the Chussia Anxiety
The West need not fear a Chussia aligned against it. It instead needs to develop geopolitical strategies to deal with China as the dominant power in Eurasia. For like the United States at the end of the nineteenth century when it consolidated its borders and established hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, China has consolidated its security in Eurasia and is now free to project power globally.
28 October 2024
A new global order has arrived
When justifying vast increases in defence expenditure, subsidies for so-called critical industries, foreign aid as an increasingly important element in the securitisation of foreign policy, governments and conservative think tanks never tire of telling the public that they live in the most dangerous of times.
17 October 2024
Great game on: China’s ascendency in Eurasia and the West’s Chussia anxiety
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.
12 September 2024
The deputy sheriff rides again
In recent days, Australia’s ‘deputy Sheriff role has been on full display again in our foreign policy. The prime minister’s extraordinary gaff at the Pacific Islands Leaders Forum, when caught out joshing along with US Deputy Secretary of State, Kurt Campbell, would have been noted not just among Pacific Island leaders, who would be entitled to feel belittled by Australia, but also across the region.
1 August 2024
Peak China? Judge by outcomes not ideology
Distinguishing in part between cyclical and structural economic challenges facing China, (eg, real estate busts vis further urbanisation potential) Geoff Raby, AO, former Australian Ambassador to China, to APEC and WTO, is sceptical of arguments propounding 'peak china' economic growth.
12 July 2024
Mr Modi goes to Moscow
Putin has done it again. Prime Minister Modi will visit Moscow as his first overseas destination since his re-election. And Modi has again demonstrated that India pursues an independent foreign policy. While this visit will come as a shock to Western policy makers. It also strikes a blow at efforts to isolate Russia internationally, while China will also be concerned.
23 May 2024
China and Russia have one bed but different dreams
Russian weakness has enabled China to emerge as Eurasia’s dominant power. But it also limits the partnership of the two.
10 April 2024
End of peak China?
It is easy these days to grab a headline about the end of peak China. China’s imminent economic stagnation is becoming conventional wisdom, unless of course one happens to be in the resources, energy, green industry, or automobile sectors, just to name a few. There, China’s demand continues to surge or, alternatively, depending on the sector, China’s capacity threatens extinction of foreign competitors.
25 March 2024
China steals a march on a distracted world
For China these days it doesnt get much easier to pursue it geostrategic objectives. With the US distracted on two fronts in Europe and the Middle East, and Russia mired in its intractable invasion of Ukraine, among the great powers, China is largely free to advance its interests on an increasingly global scale. Sabre rattling over Taiwan only further serves to distract the US from Chinas much larger game.
8 January 2024
Deploying to the Red Sea a test of US fealty
It is worth considering when exactly deploying our military assets in Australias interests becomes a test of fealty to the United States, and an act of mateship.
7 November 2023
Albaneses 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 Beijings 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, dont have any.
19 October 2023
Cheng Leis 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.
12 October 2023
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 will now be members, raising the spectre that this group is setting itself up in opposition to the G7, and is an anti-West alliance of Global South members.
29 August 2023
Muddled on the Middle Kingdom
Anthony Albanese needs to see for himself what the Chinese economic miracle looks like close up.
4 July 2023
China is going to be the great winner from Putins strife
Russias failed attempt to make Ukraine into a buffer state is only helping Chinas statecraft on its own western borders.
26 May 2023
Why a different world order is already here
US primacy is being replaced by two orders led by Washington and Beijing. Canberras job is to make the US understand what has happened.
20 April 2023
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.
14 April 2023
Australian journalists in China: Send them back!
In August, it will be three years since Australias 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.
23 March 2023
Chinas big foreign policy plays leave Australia in the cold
The Chinese Communist Partys 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 Pings tenure in the job, but for subsequent sharp policy resets.
13 March 2023
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 Chinas time will have come. Australians are now largely denied this view since the timorous Australian media is no longer present in China.
30 December 2022
Best of 2022: Australias 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 Hartchers personal victory).
17 December 2022
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 Peoples Republic of China was signed in Paris by each countrys Ambassador. To mark the event, it would be normal practice for a ministerial visit in either direction to occur. China is big on commemorative occasions. It does them well.
18 November 2022
Australias 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 Hartchers personal victory).
30 September 2022
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.
28 September 2022
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.
16 July 2022
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.
14 July 2022
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.
20 March 2022
China's elite gag on 'Vlad the Toxic'
Chinas 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.
25 February 2022
Fraser Oration excerpt: Foreign policy leadership must go beyond stoking fear
Todays Australia is hard to recognise to that which Fraser had helped shape. Today our world view is narrower, more fearful, inward looking, and mean.
2 February 2022
The China threat industry hasnt turned up any bodies
If its true that Beijing is intent on subverting liberal democracies, why havent Chinese agents of influence been exposed in Australia?
29 November 2021
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.
16 November 2021
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.
2 October 2021
Chinas trade bid a chance to mend fences
Beijing cant be happy with where its Australian relations have ended up. But Canberra should be wary of overplaying its hand.
7 September 2021
Xi Jinping wards off China-style populism
The focus on egalitarianism and crackdown on conspicuous consumption is just Beijings way of dealing with the inequalities associated with globalisation that have disrupted Western politics.
21 August 2021
Beijings 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.
29 July 2021
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 Luthers 95 theses nailed to the chapel door at Wittenberg University which started the Reformation. That is a serious misreading
1 July 2021
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 worlds largest political party. Its organisation, structure and internal discipline ensure it is the spinal cord of governance of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), moving all the parts. Extraordinarily, it has remained one of the worlds most opaque and enigmatic political organisations in the world. We often know more about the inner workings of mafia families than we do about the CCP.
22 June 2021
Morrison-Naked in Cornwall with 'allies' backfilling the markets we have lost in China
Far from being a vindication of the Governments China policies, the G7 plus 4 meeting highlighted the abject failure of Australias 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.
22 April 2021
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.
14 January 2021
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 cant decide whether the Asian giant is about to collapse or is set to take us over.
3 December 2020
Between the Lines on China: Geoff Raby
Transcript of Geoff Raby's appearance on Tom Switzer's Between the Lines on ABC.
24 November 2020
Australia has made itself an outlier in its dealing with China
The Prime Ministers dash to Japan to meet the new Japanese Prime Minister the first foreign leader to do so should be welcomed. It is unusual in terms of diplomatic protocol for an established leader to visit a newly appointed leader, not the other way around, unless it is the US for which normal protocol seldom applies.
1 November 2020
Finding our place in the new world order - book extract (AFR 30.10.2020)
Central to understanding the emerging world order is to comprehend Chinas strategic intentions and potential. The question of whether China is an expansionary power or not becomes crucial in understanding how the new order will unfold.
7 October 2020
China is opening the door. Will Australia walk through it? (AFR Oct 7, 2020)
The Financial Review's interview with a top Chinese diplomat would have been approved at the top. The Morrison government is obdurate if it does not take up the gesture.
12 September 2020
A tit for tat with no end point (AFR Sep 10, 2020)
A get-tough policy on China with no apparent goal has left Austral as the only developed country with no media representation in the country.