Looking Forward to the Continuous Stabilisation and Warming Up of Sino-Australian Relations by Global Times Editorial
Original text in Simplified Chinese: https://opinion.huanqiu.com/article/4Gyf66JlF9E
Translation:
At the invitation of New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, member of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi will pay an official visit to New Zealand and Australia from 17 to 21 March 2024. During his visit to Australia, Wang Yi and Penny Wong will hold the seventh round of China-Australia Foreign Affairs and Strategic Dialogue. Wang Yi’s visit bears significant importance for China-New Zealand and, especially, China-Australia relations.
Wang Yi’s visit to Australia just after the conclusion of the National People’s Congress demonstrates China’s willingness to continue to push bilateral relations to a new height, and Wang’s visit is an important opening chapter for the future of the China-Australia relations. 2024 marked the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which makes 2024 a key point that connects the past and the future. China and Australia should take this opportunity to sort out the past relationship and sum up experiences and lessons learnt so that the bilateral relationship can be stable and make great strides forward.
Since the Albanese Government came to power in 2022, it has adjusted the irrational China Policy of the previous two administrations. The Albanese Government’s policies have gained a positive response from China, and China-Australia relations have been able to bounce back and stabilise. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit can be considered a periodic highlight at this stage of the bilateral relations. The detour Australia has taken in its relations with China shows that the bilateral relations can be ‘destroyed’ in a short period of time, but it will be a slow and gradual process for the two countries to adjust the wrong policies, eliminate the negative impacts and push for the recovery of the bilateral relations. Today’s Canberra must learn from the past lessons and take more concrete actions. Frankly speaking, Australia still has a lot of corrective work to do in terms of its policy towards China. Such work may include stopping the use of ‘national security’ as a reason to obstruct or even undermine the Chinese enterprises to carry out mergers and acquisitions, investment and other reasonable and lawful economic and trade activities in Australia.
In the perception of the outside world, one of the most direct changes in China-Australia relations is that the atmosphere between China and Australia has improved. Some people say that the current China-Australia relations have already broken the ‘frozen’ state in the previous years, and are developing in the direction of warming up again. Australia’s two previous Prime Ministers Turnbull and Scott Morrison all liked to take radical rhetoric against China, even on things that had nothing to do with Australia, they still especially rushed to show their stances to attack, criticise and discredit China with malicious intentions. Since the Albanese Government came to power, it has shown a prudent attitude towards issues related to China’s interests, especially the core national interests. The improvement in the atmosphere of bilateral relations is often a precursor and prerequisite for an improvement in the actual bilateral relations. This is very important, not a falsehood.
The bilateral consensus of the need to bring back China-Australia relations to what is in line with, or back to, the positioning of a comprehensive strategic partnership is what is behind the turnaround of the political mutual trust between China and Australia. Especially in Australia, the country has gradually returned to the correct understanding of China. In return, the diplomatic, trade and financial, and people-to-people relations are being repaired now. Especially shown through the resolution of some specific financial and trade-related issues. Australia can directly feel the improvement of the bilateral relations from the resolution of these specific issues. Upon Wang Yi’s visit this time, the Australian media sphere is paying high attention to China’s tariff towards Australian wine. Facing the problem, if everyone negotiates the issue with a good attitude, we believe the problem can be appropriately addressed.
China has always been Australia’s largest trading partner and the bilateral trade volume accounts for nearly one-third of Australia’s foreign trade. For two large countries with highly complementary economies, both of which benefit from each other’s trade and investment, we cannot see any reason why China and Australia need to be sacrificed to the unproven ‘decoupling’ and the ‘New Cold War’ underpinned by some countries’ hegemonic thinking. A substantial part of Australia’s concern about national security, especially the issues related to China, is unnecessary, but it will be difficult for Canberra to think this through in a short period of time. China and Australia still have differences on some issues, but this is not an obstacle that cannot be overcome. Wang Yi’s visit to Australia will surely give a new impetus to China-Australia relations.