Chinese Premier Li launches pro-trade visit to Australia

Chinese Premier Li Qiang began a four-day trip to Australia on Saturday, dangling the promise of increased trade even as the two countries vie for influence in the Pacific.

Li – China's second most powerful man after President Xi Jinping – landed in Adelaide at the start of a diplomatic mission across the resource-rich continent.

The Prime Minister waved from the plane doors and was greeted on the airport tarmac by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, other government officials and a group of photographers and journalists from television.

Following an equally trade-focused visit to New Zealand, Li is the most senior Chinese official to visit either country since 2017.

The Prime Minister will visit a South Australian wine grower and view two giant pandas on loan from China to Adelaide Zoo, speak with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese before enjoying a state lunch in Canberra, then travel to a lithium mine in Western Australia.

His visit to a vineyard is a nod to China's recent lifting of heavy trade sanctions on wine, timber, barley and beef exports imposed in 2020 in a diplomatic break with a former government conservative.

The measures cost Australian exporters around A$20 billion ($13 billion) a year.

Australia's lobster industry hopes Li will reopen exports to China, lifting one of the last sanctions in place since Albania's government took power in 2022 and adopted a softer diplomatic approach towards Beijing .

The Chinese premier's visit “reflects the improving tone,” said Ryan Neelam, director of the foreign policy program at the Sydney-based think tank Lowy Institute.

“The relationship is now more focused on economic opportunities between them than in the past, which have been overshadowed by political and security differences,” he said.

“But at the same time, these differences have not disappeared.”

Australia has tightened its defense alliance with the United States as it seeks to thwart Beijing's growing diplomatic and military influence over island states scattered across the Pacific region.

China describes the AUKUS security agreement between Washington, London and Canberra – a deal that would provide Australia with nuclear-powered but conventionally armed submarines to patrol the region – as a divisive move that increases risks nuclear proliferation.

– Wine and pandas –

In the most recent sign of military tensions, Australia accused China of “dangerous and unprofessional” conduct after one of its warplanes fired flares into the path of a naval helicopter last month. above the Yellow Sea.

Albanese promised to tell Li his behavior was “inappropriate.”

Canberra also reacted with “indignation” when a Beijing court handed down a suspended death sentence to Chinese-Australian dissident writer Yang Jun earlier this year.

Such disagreements will likely be expressed behind closed doors, Neelam said.

Instead, Li struck a more friendly tone on the first full day of his trip on Sunday – visiting the famous Barossa wine region in Adelaide, the hometown of Australia's foreign minister, who is credited with helping to stabilize relations with Beijing.

China's punitive tariffs had effectively blocked exports of premium Australian wines, worth an estimated A$1 billion a year, until just three months ago.

Even today, Australian winemakers are reluctant to return to pre-tariff levels of trade with China, said Paul Turale, marketing director of industry body Wine Australia.

“Many importers are probably taking a more conservative approach when it comes to introducing new labels or wines and waiting to see the situation stabilize,” he said.

“It will take some time to reach what the industry was before.”

But first, Li will visit Adelaide Zoo where giant pandas Wang Wang and Fu Ni have been on loan from China since 2009.

Hopes are high that the two men – instruments of China's so-called panda diplomacy – will be allowed to stay even though they have produced no offspring during their time together.

djw-bur/mtp

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