CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Anthony Albanese will be the first Australian prime minister in seven years to visit China, acknowledging that bilateral ties have improved after falling apart due to trade and security differences that remain largely unresolved , have reached unprecedented levels.
The election of Albanese’s center-left government last year after nine years of conservative rule offered an opportunity for a fresh start. His three-day visit, starting Saturday, takes him to Shanghai and then Beijing, but details of his itinerary are limited.
Since 2016, when Chinese leader Xi Jinping met an Australian prime minister twice in six months, China has cut off contacts at the highest ministerial level. Official and unofficial trade sanctions have piled up since 2020, costing Australian exporters up to 20 billion Australian dollars ($13 billion) annually on commodities such as coal, wine, beef, barley and lobster, as economics and politics become intertwined in the relationship like never before are.
But many say the trade boycott hurt an economically struggling China, while Australia showed no signs of bowing to Beijing’s coercion.
“It is in Australia’s interest to have good relations with China,” Albanese told reporters last month when he announced the trip.
But Albanese’s government is also deepening security ties with the United States, particularly through the AUKUS agreement with Britain, which will provide Australia with a fleet of submarines using U.S. nuclear technology.
Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at China’s Renmin University in Beijing, said the Chinese wanted to improve trade ties after a “largely ineffective de facto boycott.”
However, Shi noted that not all trade barriers have been lifted, although Australia is confident that crippling tariffs on wine will be removed within months. The wine trade was worth AU$1.2 billion (US$771 million) annually.
“There are still some serious behaviors in Australia that China certainly considers punishable,” Shi said.
Australia’s first serious mistakes in the eyes of China occurred in 2018, when China was highlighted as a security threat.
The Australian Parliament passed a national security law that banned covert foreign interference in domestic politics and made industrial espionage for a foreign power a crime. Two months later, the government banned Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from expanding its 5G network in Australia due to unspecified security concerns.
The Chinese trade barriers followed Australian government calls for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and China’s response to the pandemic. China has blamed Australia and the US. and others who “politicize” the issue.
Albanese maintains he has not made concessions to China to achieve more stable relations, citing last month’s release of Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who was jailed in China for three years over a state secrets case.
But shortly before his planned trip was announced, Albanese’s government said it would not terminate a Chinese company’s 99-year lease on the port of Darwin, despite US fears that foreign control could be used to spy on its armed forces. Albanese had criticized the lease since it was signed in 2015, but some security analysts interpreted the decision to let Shandong Landbridge Group retain the lease as a concession to China ahead of his visit.
Australia is trying to find the right balance between security concerns and the need for a peaceful region and productive economic ties with China, said Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“That’s the balance we all have to find,” Blanchett said, comparing Australia’s position to that of Japan and South Korea.
Blanchette said increasing talk of “de-risking” Australia or a country’s economic non-dependence on China was likely to be a concern in the talks.
“I think what Australians will say is … we still want to have a strong trading relationship with you, but you will also see a realignment of capital and technology to other markets,” he said.
Australia’s efforts to diversify trade away from China, its largest trading partner, are running into obstacles. Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell announced this week that negotiations over a free trade agreement with the European Union had collapsed.
The impasse remained despite Europe’s eagerness to tap Australia’s supplies of critical minerals and rare earths to reduce its own dependence on China.
Meanwhile, Farrell expects the cost of what Australia euphemistically calls “trade impediments” with China will soon rise from a peak of AU$20 billion (US$13 billion) a year to AU$1 billion (US$643 million). ) will decrease.
Despite the political unrest between Beijing and Canberra since the last state visit by an Australian prime minister, the value of Australian goods and services exported to China has more than doubled, said James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.
Australian government data put annual exports at AU$194 billion (US$125 billion) for the year to August. In 2016, for the same period, this amount was AU$96 billion (US$71 billion at the then exchange rate, US$62 billion at the current exchange rate).
Wang Yiwei, a professor of international relations at Renmin University, said China wanted stable diplomatic relations with Australia to underpin economic ties.
“China still hopes that there will be a clear distinction between security and economics,” Wang said.
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Associated Press writers Ken Moritsugu in Beijing and Christopher Bodeen in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.
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