In recent years China has been increasingly assertive, especially in its own Asia-Pacific neighbourhood. On 2 August RAND Corporation senior political scientist Dr Andrew Scobell explored what is China seeking and where Australia fits in this search.

Dr Andrew Scobell is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. Prior to this he was an associate professor of international affairs at the George H. W. Bush School of Government and Public Service and director of the China certificate program at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. From 1999 until 2007, he was associate research professor in the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College and adjunct professor of political science at Dickinson College, both located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Scobell is author of China's Search for Security (Columbia University Press, 2012) with Andrew J. Nathan, China's Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March (Cambridge University Press, 2003).