Industry anxious for concrete outcomes from China trip
Whether you’re making sure logistics are nailed down (who’s gonna make the gravy?) or diving into deeper topics (when you gave me that kitchen appliance…), communication is the cornerstone of any strong relationship.
That applies just as much to relationships between countries as it does around the Christmas lunch table.
Australia and China are talking again at top levels, after a couple of years where things deteriorated to the point that ministers in Canberra couldn’t even get a phone call returned.
As you read this, Foreign Minister Penny Wong will be making her way back to Australia after a speedy trip to Beijing for talks with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. It’s the third time they’ve met face-to-face since Labor was elected in May, and the first ministerial visit to China in more than three years.
Ahead of the visit, Wong was managing the expectations of Australians and exporters who would like the vital trading relationship to get back on track as soon as possible.
“The mark of success is the dialogue itself,” she said while standing in sub-zero temperatures on the tarmac in Beijing. “We obviously have a lot of issues to work through, and dialogue is the prerequisite for working through them.”
Her message mirrored that of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the eve of his landmark meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last month, when he said the mere fact of the meeting was a successful outcome.
“Because for six years we have not had any dialogue — and it is not in Australia’s interest to not have dialogue with our major trading partners,” Albanese said.
Wong also made the reasonable point that premature speculation about what outcomes Australia wants from any meeting gives away leverage.
Businesses are understandably anxious to see concrete outcomes — ideally some movement from China on the $20 billion worth of trade impediments— from the meeting.
This is especially the case for those exporters of goods such as wine, lobster, barley and beef that have been most hurt.
It’s nearly impossible to overstate the importance of the trading relationship to Australia, and to the WA economy in particular.
For WA, the value of the partnership with China accounts for just over half the State’s entire imports and exports. The $143.6 billion in trade with China dwarfs all other countries; the next biggest is Japan, with trade worth $33 billion.
But another point Albanese and Wong have repeatedly made, along with the importance of talking, is how beneficial that relationship is to China too.
In the five decades since Gough Whitlam opened up diplomatic relations with China, its economic development has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
WA’s iron ore has helped construct thousands of buildings across China.
Tony Walker, a former foreign correspondent in China and now an academic at La Trobe University, says based on the extraordinary past 50 years, it would be foolish to bet against China’s continued economic rise.
All this stemmed from Whitlam’s decision in 1972 to set up the diplomatic framework that enabled the two countries to talk.
Whitlam is said to have summed up the great problem in the relationship as being that the West expects China to believe the best about its intentions while choosing to believe the worst about China’s, and has never tried to understand China’s fears.
That understanding can never come about without each side continuing to communicate and listen.
A similar point was made in the ALP’s election campaign review, which found the “unnecessarily bellicose politicisation of the relationship with China” by the Coalition worked against the national interest and made Chinese-Australian voters feel they weren’t understood or welcomed.
“We will always have differences to manage and we are always going to be better off when we talk to each other calmly and directly and with respect,” Albanese said in a video released on Wednesday to mark the 50th anniversary.
The commitment to continued diplomatic communication fits with the Prime Minister’s open-door, open-ear approach to politics as a whole.
It seems to be working so far, although there will only be so much softly-softly the business community has patience for before it expects returns.
The other part of the equation is that China’s ears also seem to have reopened.
It has pivoted away from the “wolf warrior” approach to diplomacy and has re-engaged in dialogue with many countries.
Albanese was one in a string of world leaders who had their first face-to-face meeting in years with Xi on the sidelines of the G20.
But, as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau learned when Xi chided him in front of cameras, the economic giant can still dial up the iciness if it is unhappy.
And a drop-off in communication is no good for even the strongest of relationships.
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