While the Australian government has hailed the Chinese Premier’s four-day visit to Australia as an important milestone, the visit has also served as a reminder of ongoing tensions between the countries and the economic leverage China possesses.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00I think we're going to see a fairly interesting bit of symbolism because the Premier is going
00:06to sit down for a lunch with the Foreign Minister and the Trade Minister and some of Australia's
00:11top winemakers at a very well-known Adelaide wine space.
00:16Now that is very deliberately done.
00:18The Australian Government and the Chinese Government are signalling that both sides
00:22see value in the trade relationship.
00:24Of course, wine was one of those exports from Australia which was targeted by China
00:30at the nadir of the relationship, but China has this year lifted those tariffs as expected
00:36and wine is now flowing back into the Chinese market.
00:39Not at the rates it was back in around 2019 or so, but still it's a welcome relief for
00:45an industry that was really hurt by those sanctions.
00:48So the Australian Government wants to signal here that there's value in engaging with China
00:53because we're not hit with the same coercive trade measures, but there's also the corollary
00:57of that which is it's a reminder of the fact that China is willing to use its economic
01:01might as leverage when it has disagreements with countries like Australia.
01:07So in that sense, it's simultaneously a signal of a hopefully more agreeable future, but
01:13also a reminder of the way that China is increasingly coercive and assertive in its diplomacy and
01:19in its approach to global affairs.
01:22So I think that will be an underlying theme of the Premier's visit over the next two or
01:26three days.
01:27And I don't think China really does believe in the end that all differences can simply
01:31be shelved.
01:32What China wants to say when it says something like that is that it would like to put these
01:37disagreements to one side, it would like Australia ideally to be much more quiet, if not silent
01:42on some of these issues where we disagree, in order to basically pursue mutually beneficial
01:48trade relationships.
01:49Of course, that is not how Australia sees it.
01:52Australia is increasingly worried about many of the things that China has been doing, whether
01:57that's espionage in Australia, cyber attacks in Australia, the fact that a number of Australians
02:03have been locked up in China, including Dr Yang Hengchun, who's still facing a suspended
02:08death sentence.
02:09The fact that Australia and China are now engaged in some really tense encounters in
02:13places like the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea, where we've seen the Australian and Chinese
02:19militaries bump up against one another in recent years, there's a long, long list.
02:24And a lot of this just stems from the fact that China and Australia have radically different
02:28views about the regional order and how it should work and China's place in that regional
02:32order.
02:33So there is still a vast gulf between the two sides.
02:37The government says that gulf can to some extent be bridged just through the simple
02:41act of dialogue, and that it's better to talk than to simply be in a position where we have
02:47no high-level access to China.
02:50But there are still some really deep structural constraints to the relationship, and all of
02:54the panda diplomacy, as valuable and occasionally heartwarming as that might be, all the panda
02:59diplomacy in the world can't hide those big structural deficits in the relationship.