Anthony Albanese is on his way to the Pacific Islands Forum having completed a major diplomatic reset with China, including an agreement to create a new multi-entry visa to facilitate people-to-people exchanges and closer ties.
The new visa for visitors and business people was agreed at the conclusion of the Australian Prime Minister’s meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Monday and Tuesday.
In a joint statement issued as Albanese left the country, the Australian and Chinese governments welcomed “the contribution of people-to-people exchanges to the bilateral relationship, including increased exchanges of students, tourists and business people” and the resumption of the leaders’ dialogue, which had been suspended for several years.
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Drawing a line under a diplomatic rift that escalated into a damaging trade war after Scott Morrison called for an independent inquiry into the origins of Covid-19 in 2020, Australia and China will resume an annual leaders’ meeting between the prime minister and the premier of the People’s Republic, a foreign ministers’ dialogue and an economic dialogue.
Mr Albanese’s visit to China began at the weekend with a trade-focused visit to the country’s commercial capital, Shanghai. He then met with leaders in Beijing.
Albanese said the trip – the first by an Australian prime minister since 2016, and timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Gough Whitlam’s establishment of diplomatic relations with the communist country – marked a point where the “relationship was moving forward, where dialogue was taking place in a way that was respectful, where differences could be discussed in a way that didn’t define the whole relationship”.
“I’ve always said that we will cooperate with China where we can, we will disagree where we must, but we will engage in our national interest,” the Australian Prime Minister told visiting reporters in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
“I think people will also look at this visit and see it as the culmination of 18 months of hard work by the Foreign Secretary and other members of the Government, as well as members of the Chinese Government, where our approach has been to be patient, deliberate and calibrated in moving the relationship forward.”
Shadow foreign secretary Simon Birmingham welcomed the diplomatic thaw. But he said the Albanian government needed to “remain clear-eyed about the challenges that remain with China, that the strategic challenges and the environment have not changed”.
Birmingham said China had engaged in cyber-espionage and “aggressive military tactics against the Philippines in the South China Sea”. He also noted that Xi had recently hosted Vladimir Putin in the Chinese capital “as yet another extension of their friendship without borders or limits”.
“So these are all reminders of why real caution is needed, as well as the many unresolved aspects of bilateral tensions in the relationship,” Birmingham said on Tuesday.
