In this public seminar, Andrew Small will explain the ramifications of Sino-Pakistani ties for the West, for India, for Afghanistan and for Asia as a whole. He will explore some of the relationship’s most sensitive aspects, including Beijing’s support for Pakistan’s nuclear program, China’s dealings with the Taliban, and the Chinese military’s planning for crises in Pakistan.

From China’s involvement in South Asia’s wars to the Obama administration’s efforts to secure Chinese cooperation in stabilising the region, he will trace the dilemmas Beijing increasingly faces between pursuing its strategic rivalry with India and the United States, and the imperative to address a terrorist threat that has become one of the gravest dangers to China’s internal stability. Mr Small will also examine China’s ambitious new economic plans for Pakistan, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and what they mean for Beijing’s ambitious ‘One Belt and One Road’ initiative.

Andrew Small is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s (GMF) Asia program, which he established in 2006. His research focuses on US-China relations, Europe-China relations, Chinese policy in South Asia, and broader developments in China’s foreign and economic policy. Mr Small was based in GMF’s Brussels office for five years, and worked before that as the director of the Foreign Policy Centre’s Beijing office, as a visiting fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and an Empowering Students Universally (ESU) scholar in the office of Senator Edward M Kennedy. His articles and papers have been published in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and the Washington Quarterly, as well as many other journals, magazines and newspapers. Mr Small is the author of the book The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics published with Hurst / Oxford University Press in 2015. He was educated at Balliol College, University of Oxford.

Andrew Small is visiting Australia as a guest of the ANU National Security College.