Anthony Albanese is en route to the Pacific Islands Forum after executing a comprehensive diplomatic reset with China which includes an agreement to create a new multi-entry visa to facilitate exchanges and closer links between people.
The new visa for visitors and business people was agreed at the conclusion of the Australian prime minister’s meetings with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and the premier, Li Qiang, in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Monday and Tuesday.
In a joint statement released as Albanese left the country, the governments of Australia and China welcomed “the contribution of people-to-people exchanges to the bilateral relationship, including the increasing exchanges of students, tourists and business people” as well as the resumption of leader-level dialogues suspended for several years.
Drawing a line over a diplomatic fracture that escalated into a damaging trade war after Scott Morrison in 2020 called for an independent inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, 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.
Albanese’s visit to China began at the weekend with a trade-focused visit to the country’s commercial capital, Shanghai. He then met the leadership in Beijing.
Albanese said the trip – the first by an Australian prime minister since 2016, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Gough Whitlam establishing diplomatic relations with the communist country – marked a point where the “relationship moved forward, where dialogue occurred in a way that was respectful, where differences were able to be discussed in a way that didn’t define the whole relationship”.
“I’ve said consistently that we’ll cooperate where we can with China, we’ll disagree where we must, but we will engage in our national interest,” Australia’s prime minister told travelling reporters in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
“I think people will look at this visit as well and see this as a culmination of 18 months of hard work by the foreign minister and by other members of the government, as well as members of the Chinese government, as one where our approach has been to be patient, deliberate and calibrated in moving the relationship forward.”
The shadow foreign affairs minister, Simon Birmingham, welcomed the diplomatic thaw. But he said the Albanese government needed to “remain clear-eyed about the challenges that still exist with China; that the strategic challenges and environment have not changed”.
Birmingham said China engaged in cyber-espionage and launched “aggressive military tactics against the Philippines in the South China Sea”. He also noted Xi had recently hosted Vladimir Putin in the Chinese capital “as yet a further extension of their friendship without boundaries or limits”.
“So these are all reminders of why real caution is needed, as well as the many unresolved aspects of the bilateral tensions in the relationship,” Birmingham said on Tuesday.
