Key Points
- Ministerial-level talks between Australia and China have been praised as “a solid first step towards a recalibration of the bilateral relationship”.
- Experts say strong family and business ties between the two nations are key to improving relations.
Australia’s diplomatic deep freeze with China has ended after nearly three years, and experts say strong family and business ties between the two nations are key to improving relations.
Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles held talks with Chinese defence minister Wei Fenghe in Singapore on Sunday, in what he said was an “important first step” in improving strained diplomatic relations.
It represented the first ministerial-level meeting between the Australian and Chinese governments since November 2019.
Following the meeting, China’s ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian said relations between the two nations were “at a new juncture of development, facing many challenges and huge opportunities”.
China is “committed to conducting friendly exchanges and co-operation with the Australian side for mutual benefits and win-win results. This policy was and is not changing”, Mr Xiao said in a speech at the Australia-China Friendship Association's national conference in Western Australia.
The resumption of ministerial-level dialogue is “very significant” and represents “an opportunity to re-engage, to change the trajectory” of Sino-Australian relations, Professor James Laurenceson, the director of the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at UTS, told SBS News.
Family, community and business ties between the nations are “hugely significant” to improving relations, he said.
Australia is home to a large number of people with Chinese heritage, with more than 1.2 million Australian residents identifying as having Chinese ancestry in the 2016 Census.
Australia’s Chinese diaspora and subsequent business ties between the two nations have “really been the glue that has held the bilateral relationship together, as the political relationship has completely fallen apart”, Professor Laurenceson said.
How the diplomatic freeze happened
For nearly three years, Australia has been “an outlier in our own region” when it comes to relations with China in two key ways, Professor Laurenceson said.
The first is the “complete breakdown of diplomatic dialogue”, which sets Australia apart from other countries including Japan and India.
“Plenty of countries have problems with China, but all of those countries, throughout their challenges, have managed to maintain ministerial-level dialogue. We haven't,” he said.
The second is the level at which trade between the two nations has been hampered by the soured relations, with China hitting Australia with tariffs on a number of products.
“We're an outlier when it comes to the level of trade disruption,” Professor Laurenceson said.
“So [the resumption of ministerial-level meetings] is some very positive progress on one of the areas in which we're an outlier.”
Following his election victory in 2019, then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government engaged in promising diplomatic and trade relations between China and Australia, with Mr Morrison meeting with both China’s President Xi Jinping and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.
Then COVID-19 hit, and Mr Morrison’s public call for an inquiry into the pandemic's origins in China meant relations between the two nations begin to deteriorate.
“What changed was that in early 2020, even calling for a COVID inquiry, the Morrison government, including the prime minister himself, really touted an alignment between Canberra and Washington on that endeavour," Professor Laurenceson said.
"That was significant, because in early 2020, that was when the Trump administration was calling COVID-19 'the China virus' and the 'kung flu' and all this stuff, and really leading a political attack on China, over COVID-19.
“So the Morrison government, in its own language, gave China every impression that we were actually co-ordinating with the Trump administration to launch a political attack over the virus.”
Tourism and study
China was Australia’s largest source of international tourists before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the 12 months to September 2019, 1.33 million Chinese tourists visited Australia, data from the Australian Trade and Investment Commission showed.
Australia’s pandemic border closures saw this figure plunge by 99.7 per cent to just 3,350 visitors in the year ending September 2021.
Australian Federation of Travel Agents CEO Dean Long said the resumption of diplomatic discussions was “a really important step forward for our industry”, and for local communities.
“Prior to the pandemic, China was Australia's largest inbound segment, and a really important one, both in terms of volume and also the value of the dollar spent in Australia,” Mr Long said.
Outbound travel from Australia to China was also significant pre-COVID-19 thanks to strong community and family ties, with an average of 600,000 outbound trips by Australian citizens a year, he said.
“A lot of that was underpinned by the local community, which has family heritage ties back to China,” Mr Long said.
“If we can redevelop those diplomatic ties then we can start connecting those community ties, which has served the country really well,” he said.
Chinese international students were also a major customer base for Australian universities prior to COVID-19.
Jessie Xiao is managing director of the Advisory Centre for Australian Education, which assists Chinese students looking to study in Australia.
Ms Xiao welcomed the end to the diplomatic freeze.
“We’re hoping with the new reset, to some extent, of the relationship between China and Australia, that more parents will be more willing for their children to come over,” Ms Xiao said.
“In China, there hasn't been a lot of positivity around relations between the two countries. So hopefully, with more conversations happening, they will be more willing to send their kids abroad.”
Professor Laurenceson said China’s stringent COVID-19 travel and quarantine regulations were largely behind the slow return of Chinese tertiary students to Australia.
“We haven't had a rapid return of Chinese students because they’re worried that if they come to Australia, they simply won't be able to go back home,” he said.
However, earlier this year, China’s foreign ministry reviewed its risk ratings for Chinese citizens travelling abroad, and reconfirmed Australia’s travel rating as “low risk”, whereas the US and the UK were rated as “medium risk”, Professor Laurenceson said.
“That was significant to me, because that's sort of a classic bureaucratic tweak that China could have changed if they wanted to punish Australia more. But it chose not to do that,” he said.
“So I think once China's own quarantine regulations ease up a bit, then I'm fairly confident that those tertiary level students, tourists, those ties will be re-established once again.
Trade tariffs
The breakdown of the political relationship between Australia and China in 2020 was followed by a , barley, beef and lobster.
Now, there’s hope from the business community that renewed diplomatic dialogue could improve the trading relationship.
Australia China Business Council national president David Olsson said the meeting was “a solid first step towards a recalibration of the bilateral relationship”.
“Dialogue is a priority – as a significant country in the Indo-Pacific, Australia needs to be able to discuss all manner of issues with China at the highest level, especially around our trading relationship,” he said.
Mr Olsson said that Australia should “be realistic about China’s role in the global economy and be aware that there are areas where engagement with China will be inevitable and desirable for our prosperity”.
He said the approach of the new government led by Anthony Albanese is “certainly helping” and that he hoped China would “reciprocate in the same spirit”.
Key areas for “immediate discussion” between the two nations include trade rules and trade and investment opportunities in the region, Mr Olsson said, as well as “the necessity for us to work more closely together to address our climate change goals”.
