KEY POINTS
- Penny Wong will travel to China on Tuesday.
- She will be the first foreign minister since 2018 to make the trip.
- Anthony Albanese held 'constructive' talks with Xi Jinping last month.
A reset in Australia-China relations is gathering pace, with Penny Wong to become the first Australian foreign minister to fly to Beijing in more than four years.
Senator Wong will travel to mark 50 years since China and Australia established diplomatic relations, in the latest sign three years wracked by tit-for-tat accusations and trade sanctions may be coming to an end.
"Australia seeks a stable relationship with China; we will cooperate where we can, disagree where we must and engage in the national interest," she said in a statement.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with Chinese President Xi Jinping last month. Source: Getty / Yan Yan/Xinhua
It will be the first time an Australian government minister has travelled to the country's biggest trading partner since 2019, when then trade minister Simon Birmingham visited, before relations sharply deteriorated. Marise Payne was the last Australian foreign minister to visit China, in 2018.
But is this the start of a new era in Australia-China relations?
Here’s what you need to know.
What will be discussed, and will it change anything?
A raft of trade sanctions, still in place since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the detention of Australians in China are likely to be on the table.
Mr Albanese described his November meeting with President Xi as a "positive development", but was keen to lower expectations of rapid progress.
"You shouldn't expect ... that you have a meeting like that and we put forward a position and they come up with a conclusion. That’s simply not the way that the system works," he said.
Senator Wong's trip is a continuation of improved recent relations, but it's uncertain whether anything tangible will come of it.
Mr Birmingham, now Coalition foreign affairs spokesman, welcomed the announcement, saying Beijing suspending face-to-face dialogue had been “counterproductive”.
“Engagement between governments is essential to advance areas of mutual interest and to manage differences,” he said.
What's behind the change in tone?
President Xi told Mr Albanese last month that the relationship needed to be "cherished by both sides".
China has outwardly used the May change of government in Australia to reset the relationship, after rhetoric between it and the Coalition escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chinese premier has also recently met with US President Joe Biden. Source: AAP, SBS
But there had been a marked change in tone and language under its successor since the May election, she said.
“It's talking about engagement rather than about potential conflict,” she told SBS News.
Analysts say China's struggles on the domestic front - the government is dealing with sluggish economic growth and - means Beijing has a vested interest in normalising relations with its largest trading partners.
China has also reached out a hand to Washington, despite anger . President Xi , a major step, while Anthony Blinken, Senator Wong's US equivalent, is also set to visit China early next year.
Ms Hsu said China has felt “encircled” by the United States over the past few years, including by the AUKUS pact it signed with Australia in 2021.
But with mounting and “fairly challenging” issues at home and abroad, she said President Xi’s priority is shoring up the Chinese economy.
“One of the key components of that is to ensure that China has access to the technology it requires, [and] to the materials that it requires from Australia: iron ore, steel, coal,” she said.
How did we get here?
Relations between the pair had been simmering over Australia’s 2018 decision to block Chinese company Huawei from involvement in its 5G network, citing national security concerns.
But it was Australia’s decision to go it alone by calling for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19 which seemed to prompt a full-scale deterioration.
A wave of Chinese sanctions on Australian products - including barley, beef, and wine - followed over the following 18 months, .
Chinese officials for years refused to pick up the phone to their Australian counterparts, despite Canberra repeatedly attempting to keep lines of communication open.
In November 2020, Beijing released a list of 14 grievances with Canberra, including claims Australia was deliberately stoking anti-China hysteria and acting at the behest of the US in the Indo-Pacific.
That was dismissed as “nonsense” by former prime minister Scott Morrison. "Australia is a sovereign country. We make our own decisions according with [our] national interests,” he said in November 2020.
Less than a fortnight later, an outraged Mr Morrison also demanded an apology from Beijing in 2020, after a Chinese government official tweeted a graphic, doctored picture of an Australian soldier holding a knife to a child’s throat.
The provocative image was an apparent reference to the Brereton report, which detailed evidence of alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.
Australia has repeatedly raised the detention of two Australians - journalist Cheng Lei and writer Yang Hengjun - in China.
Ms Lei was arrested over two years ago, accused of espionage by China. She faced a behind-closed-doors trial last year, but is yet to learn the outcome. Her partner says consular visits have been extremely limited.
