Whether it was cooking demonstrations by Asian-Australian chefs, artisanal food stalls or tame koalas wheeled in for leaders and foreign journalists to pat, Brand Australia went the full court press at this week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders’ gathering in Melbourne. Even the toy stuffed kangaroos were made in Australia rather than China.

But like so much international summitry these days, the topic of China was never far from the surface. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim laid down an early marker when he declared if Australia and other Western nations “have problems with China, they should not impose it upon us”.