Australian PM Albanese Visits Xi But Unlikely To Change Its Military Stand
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that there has been “significant progress” in relations with China after talks with President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
Albanese, who landed in Shanghai on Saturday, is the first Australian leader to visit China since 2016. The four-day state visit is seen as a key point in thawing relations, after a string of trade and security disputes.
However, experts on foreign policy believe that the warmer relations between Beijing and Canberra are unlikely to shift Australia’s military alliances. Albanese is also the first Aukus leader to visit Beijing. Australia, the UK and the US formed the military group, Aukus in 2021.
Under this partnership, the UK and the US will share nuclear propulsion technology with Australia, as they have done with each other since 1958 under the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement. The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) will acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines armed with conventional weapons.
During the meeting, President Xi Jinping said to Albanese that this visit is building on past achievements and opening up new prospects and a sound and stable relationship between us will benefit our people and meet the common expectations of people in the region.
Our relations are on the right path and we should push forward with a China-Australia comprehensive economic partnership, Xi added.
On the other side, Albanese has been calling for removing Chinese tariffs on Australian goods. Economic tensions have been eased under the Albanese leadership which has been going on since 2020.
The deterioration of Australia–China relations
Relations between Australia and China reached a new low after Australia’s then-foreign minister demanded an international inquiry into China’s response to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Beijing’s pointed diplomatic response and imposed economic retaliatory measures.
Australia has been one of the many targets of Beijing’s so-called ‘wolf-warrior diplomacy,’ a public information campaign in which diplomats and foreign ministry spokespeople respond rapidly to any perceived slight against China, often using tendentious arguments and blatant falsehoods on social media networks such as Twitter.
China accounted for 35.5 per cent of Australia’s goods exports in 2018, a much higher share than the 1.5 per cent and 3.9 per cent purchased by the United Kingdom and the United States respectively.
