Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd goes world wide on China’s assertiveness

Kevin Rudd

He may no longer be prime minister but Kevin Rudd is about to again strut the world stage in support of an article for Foreign Affairs magazine on relations between China and the US.

Mr Rudd has scheduled trips to South Korea, China and the US as parliament prepares to break ahead of the May budget.

He is scheduled to speak next week at the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul which has a theme of “Asia’s Next Challenge: Good Growth and Smart Welfare”.

He will speak during a conference session called “Diplomatic Strategy for Peace and Prosperity in Northeast Asia” along with former US secretary of state Colin Powell and German business consultant Burkhard Schwenker.

A spokesman for Mr Rudd said he would also participate in a number of other events at the conference, including the session “Challenges and Tasks of New Asian Leadership”.

He is then due to visit Beijing, where his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter live, and where Mr Rudd holds an honorary position as a visiting lecturer at Tsinghua University.

After the Easter break, Mr Rudd will head to the US where he has a number of speaking engagements following his article in Foreign Affairs magazine.

These include in Washington at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Atlantic Council; and in Boston at the Harvard Kennedy School. He will also address the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

In the Foreign Affairs article Mr Rudd argues that China’s assertive foreign and security policies are dominating strategic concerns in the Asia-Pacific region and have led directly to a strong US response.

He said the “pivot” to Asia by US President Barack Obama was a direct response to this Chinese assertiveness.

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