Trump's not alone in his concerns about China and Russia's close ties. In his new book, Great Game On, former Australian ambassador to Beijing, Jeff Raby, gives it a name, Cheshire Anxiety. There

are many, many more things that divide Russia and China than unite them. When you look at it closely, the main bond between them is each Putin and Xi have a sour attitude towards the West, particularly the United States. And they see an opportunity in what is now a multipolar world to diminish US influence.

Rabie says the West should be more focused on China's rise in Central Asia, where Beijing is winning a contest for control with Moscow. Welcome to The Fin. I'm Lisa Murray. Today, financial review contributor and former diplomat Jeff Raby on Trump's world and what it means for Australia and why China and Russia are less close than you might think. It's Thursday, November 21. Hi, Jeff. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Yeah,

my pleasure, Lisa. Thanks for having me.

Jeff, you're a long-time diplomat. You were the ambassador to China from 2007 until 2011, and you've seen many consequential changes of government. How does the return of Donald Trump to the White House rate, in terms of the big foreign policy changes, it might bring about? Well,

I think this is really going to be a big one. We did have Trump 1.0, so we know a little bit about him. But I think there's a consensus few amongst analysts and commentators that Trump, for much of his period, was surrounded by more conventional advisors, more conventional Republicans, and in a sense was more constrained from his personal agenda. This time, it looks like he will be unconstrained and we're going to see in Trump 2.0, Trump unleashed. So certainly it'll be a big change from the Biden White House approach to foreign policy. I think Biden did a very good job actually in much of the foreign policy issues that he dealt with. In particular, in the Asia-Pacific, the construction of what's been called a lattice work of relationships, minilateral, plurilateral, bilateral relations between members, not just with Washington, but with each other. And I think it was quite remarkable what he did in that respect with Japan, South Korea, trilaterally, Japan, Philippines, South Korea, and so on. So that was a foreign policy that was largely based on alliances. And I think what we're going to see with Trump is a big shift to great power relations. Trump understands and wants to use and flex US enormous power. He's very cognizant of that, and so are his advisors. And he'll be looking to deal more directly with the capitals. I think Air Force One will be on the ground much more often in Beijing than in some of the other capitals in the region. There'll be less emphasis on relationships along ideological lines. It will be much more the art of the deal, much more pragmatic, less emphasis on human rights, on issues of democracy. These will be second-order priorities to getting positive outcomes for the United States.