On Tuesday 25 February 2025, AIIA New South Wales welcomed international analyst, economist and former ambassador to China Dr Geoff Raby to discuss the changing geostrategic environment of Eurasia and its role in shaping the contest for global power. His book, Great Game On: The contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy, released in late 2024, explores China’s rise to pre-eminence in central Asia. Raby argues that China’s “frontier security” in the region has given it the confidence to project power globally.

Raby began his talk by challenging what he has termed “Chussia anxiety”: the overly-simplistic assumption permeating Western discourse that Russia and China are bound together in an autocratic alliance against liberal democracies. Raby contests this, arguing that while both share an antipathy to the US-led world order, more divides the two countries than unites them.

Against the backdrop of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump’s recent telephone conversation on a peace deal in Ukaine and J.D. Vance’s shakeup in Munich on European security, Dr Raby described the new networks being forged between unlikely friends. He invoked the phrase “reverse Kissinger moment” to describe these shifting dynamics, referencing Henry Kissinger’s efforts to separate the two communist powers in the 1980s and capture the PRC in an anti-Soviet entente.

According to Raby, Russia and China’s so called “no-limits” friendship is still marked by historical grievances. This dates back to the nineteenth century, with a series of “unequal treaties” that resulted in China ceding one million square kilometres of its land to Russia. This land remains contested and is yet to be returned to China. As increasingly strong nationalist sentiment shapes the PRC’s foreign policy apparatus, Raby asks what the status of this land will be in years to come.

Raby also outlined the two countries’ conflicting approaches to security. While Russia’s security is pursued through territorial expansion and outright land invasion, China’s (he suggested) is realised through diplomacy, commerce and bribery, resulting in a network of “client states” that recognise China’s geopolitical primacy.

Raby argued that the greater effectiveness of China’s strategy is a point of tension between the two states. Nowhere has this been exemplified better than in China’s economic integration throughout central Asia. While Russia and the Soviet Union once exerted considerable power and influence over central Asian countries as primary security guarantors, the war in Ukraine has been a blow to Russia’s international prestige and has depleted its military. China has thus assumed pre-eminence in the region, unsettling the Russian elites.

Looking beyond the Ukraine war, Raby suggested that, with a more-qualified US commitment to Europe and the realities of economics, better relations are likely to grow in the longer term between European countries and Russia.

Raby’s remarks prompted a series of questions from audience members. When asked about China’s comfort level with Russia’s war on Ukraine, Raby articulated his concern that China, in fact, wants Putin to succeed. He argued that the PRC’s principal fear regarding Russia is a revolution prompted by a weakened Russian state if it fails in its Ukraine objectives. This would require China to recalibrate its Russian strategy.

Raby agreed that the Ukraine war has caused some level of disruption to China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative, but noted that China is still extending its presence in other parts of the world, such as Latin America and Africa.

Asked about the implications for Australia of US/China global competition, Raby described Australia’s place in the multipolar system as becoming increasingly “dystopian”. For the first time in history, Raby observed, Australia does not have a large, values-aligned power guaranteeing its security. Trump’s dismantling of USAID in the Pacific was a signal.

On the role of AUKUS, Raby suggested that the symbolism of AUKUS upends the last fifty years of Australian policy-making, which had worked to establish an independent and Asia-focused foreign policy. At a practical level, Raby also expressed his doubts that AUKUS would materialise within the time-frame such capabilities require.

In light of Friedrich Merz’ recent election victory in Germany and his call for greater independence from the US, Raby was asked about the potential of a “NATO sans US” and how this would be viewed from Beijing. He acknowledged that Germany and France, along with other European states, are increasing their defence spending dramatically to support Ukraine. Friction between the US and Europe is viewed by China as an opportunity for China to increase its sway and undermine the transatlantic alliance. Europe might even begin to reassess its view of China as a strategic competitor.

Report by Lily Manning, AIIA NSW intern

Dr Geoff Raby (right) with AIIA NSW intern Lily Manning (centre) and president Ian Lincoln