Australia : Will it become a client state of China ?

Despite the hype over Australia 's supposed China-focused economic destiny and our closer political and security engagement with Beijing , there remains a bipartisan credibility gap in Australian China policy. That policy tends towards short-term trade goals, lacks strategic clarity and ignores the extent to which China is attempting to draw regional states, including Australia, into a new Sino-centric sphere of influence.

As APEC draws nearer, this seminar will examine:

Whether the Australian policy community is suffering a kind of “China blindness”?

Whether wishful thinking has supplanted objective views of the challenges to our interests, to regional security and to our freedoms and values, posed by a rapidly rising China ?

Whether Australia should embrace China 's ‘peaceful rise' and become a regional partner?

The Moderator for this seminar will be Hon Dr. Geoff Gallop. The speakers are:

Hon Kim Beazley MP, Member for Brand (WA). Leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party from 1996 to 2001, and from 2005 to the end of 2006. Kim was educated at Oxford as a Rhode scholar where he studied international relations and politics. Kim Beazley was Defence Minister during the Hawke/Keating years and re-positioned Australia 's security strategy. Kim Beazley has many decades of experience dealing with China .

Dr. Chris Rahman is a Research Fellow at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong . Chris wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the strategic implications of the rise of China as a maritime power. In 2001 h e won third prize in the U.S. Naval War College's Hugh G. Nott Prize for articles published in the Naval War College Review for his essay “Defending Taiwan, and Why It Matters.”

Mr. Allan Behm has worked in the Australian diplomatic service, the Prime Minister's Department, the Department of Defence and the Attorney-General's Department. Specialising in international relations, defence strategy, counter-terrorism and law enforcement policy. From the mid 90s, as head of the International Policy and Strategy Divisions of the Department of Defence, he was responsible for the overall management of Australia 's strategic intelligence relationship with the USA , defence relations with Indonesia and the broader Asia-Pacific security affairs.

Any matters related to media or any other enquiry, please contact Simon O'Hara on 0400 188 815.