Australia’s government has cooled things down with Beijing—at least, for now. But while the relationship may be less heated, beneath the surface it is no less contentious.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese—ably assisted by his foreign minister, Penny Wong, and defense minister, Richard Marles—should be applauded for lowering the temperature between both countries.
China turned fiercely against Australia after a call for investigation into COVID-19’s origins in April 2020 by then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The relationship reached its nadir later that year, when the now infamous list of “14 Chinese Grievances”—which included Australia’s banning of Huawei from its 5G network, restrictions on Chinese ownership in critical Australian infrastructure, foreign interference laws, and Australia’s ongoing support of a free press—was posted by the Chinese Embassy in Canberra as the rationale for a sweeping series of sanctions on Australian exports.
After several years where Canberra’s calls went unanswered in Beijing, billions in sanctions were placed on Aussie goods, several Australians inside China were arrested, and Chinese state media described Australia as “chewing gum stuck under China’s shoe” while distributing doctored images depicting Australian soldiers murdering Afghan babies, a return to niceties shouldn’t be discounted.
As Albanese told attendees at Singapore’s Shangri-La meeting in June, diplomatic dialogue is the “first and most fundamental guardrail” of diplomacy. Albanese rightly asserts that years of “deep freeze” between Australia and China created conditions for both countries to “assume the worst of one another.”
But behind the smiles and photo ops, the strategic tension between both countries is only intensifying.
Even in trade, where Australia’s resource-heavy economy has long complemented Chinese manufacturing, highly politicized Chinese sanctions on Australian goods remain firmly in place.
This highlights the challenges of dealing with China. The wolf warrior tone might be mildly diminished, but the substance of expansionist Chinese Communist Party policies remains.
Albanese said in November 2022 that his government will define the relationship as one where Australia and China will “cooperate where we can” but “disagree where we must.”
Only, what if actual agreement is essentially impossible?
China’s defense minister, Li Shangfu, gave the Shangri-La audience a taste of how China views negotiations it doesn’t like when he commented on freedom of navigation exercises by saying “in China we always say, ‘Mind your own business.” Quite.