Asia Program

Richard C. Smith, Wilson Center Australian Scholar and a former Australian ambassador to China, offers a brief survey of Australian thinking about the place of China in Australian defense strategy over the past six decades. Australia's strategic community, Smith finds, generally tended to view China's military planning as essentially defensive. However, the community also understood that as China become wealthier, this would inevitably change strategic balances in the region. For the text of this essay, click here.