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Australia's China challenge

This Month

Defence minister Richard Marles meets with US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin and director general of the Japan Defence Agency, Gen Nakatani, on November 17.

Australia, US, Japan to strengthen military ties in face of China threat

Defence ministers agreed to a new “commitment to consult” over regional security issues and invited Japanese troops to train in Darwin.

  • Updated
  • Andrew Tillett

October

China Southern will start new flights between Beijing and Sydney and Melbourne in December.

Why these super-cheap flights to Europe could be under threat

Australians are prime beneficiaries of Chinese airlines’ ultra-low airfares to Europe. But the European carriers want Brussels to level up the playing field.

  • Hans van Leeuwen
KWM global boss Sue Kench will step down from the role at the end of the year, and will retire from the partnership in mid-2025.

King & Wood Mallesons global chief executive to step down

Sue Kench will depart at the end of the year and retire from the partnership next year, as the firm doubles down on its Sino-Australian alliance.

  • Maxim Shanahan
Australia’s ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd and former US president Donald Trump.

Washington welcomes Kevin Rudd’s hardline views on Xi Jinping

Depicting China’s leader as an aggressive ideologue could help the former Australian prime minister in his ambassadorial role following the US election.

  • Matthew Cranston

Albanese’s domestic solar manufacturing hero strikes China pact

The face of the federal government’s plan to build a domestic solar panel manufacturing industry has partnered with a Chinese giant in pursuit of Australian subsidies.

  • Updated
  • Peter Ker
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Mr Albanese’s visit to Laos included a trade breakthrough with China.

Aussie gas will keep flowing, Albanese tells Japan

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used his first face-to-face meeting with the new Japanese leader to talk up security of gas imports.

  • Tom McIlroy
It is China’s consumers that need to pull the country out of its malaise.

Why Australia can’t keep relying on hopes of China stimulus

Beijing’s latest version of its stalling stimulus model will become another dead end. It’s time for Australia to make its own economy more adaptable.

  • John Lee
Uranium stocks have rebounded lately.

Paladin’s $1.5b uranium deal slowed by national security probe

Canada has launched a national security probe into Paladin Energy’s proposed acquisition of Fission Uranium as Chinese partners try to influence the deal.

  • Peter Ker

September

China is embracing EVs while European enthusiasm has ebbed.

Friend or foe? Europe’s big Chinese EV dilemma

Bad news hasn’t been enough to get European carmakers and politicians to rethink their anti-China strategy. But that’s exactly what might need to happen.

  • Hans van Leeuwen

August

Nearly 20 per cent of Australia’s annual exports is iron ore to China, which makes the steel mill statistics concerning.

The number that should scare all Australians

You couldn’t blame Australia’s large cap fund managers for booking a post-reporting season trip to China to see the steel situation for themselves.

  • Anthony Macdonald

China warns winter is coming for iron ore miners

Australian iron ore exporters believe their mines are resilient despite shares slumping to multi-year lows and Chinese steelmaker Baowu issuing a dire outlook.

  • Peter Ker
A fighter jet lands on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea.

Talks sanction more US bombers, fighter jets, spy planes in Australia

Annual defence and foreign affairs talks will see Australia deepen its role as the US’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in a potential conflict with China.

  • Andrew Tillett and Matthew Cranston
There are calls for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to provide ASIO director-general Mike Burgess with extra resources to deal with the rising risk of politically motivated violence.

Warnings over ASIO workload because of heightened terror threat

The ASIO chief admits the spy agency is “stretched” as it deals with twin challenges of politically motivated violence and foreign espionage.

  • Andrew Tillett

Kim Beazley is utterly wrong, says Paul Keating

Former prime minister Paul Keating writes on WA’s risk from China; other writers on uranium mining in Jabiluka; Ismail Haniyeh’s death; lack of AUKUS transparency; and NSW eviction laws.

July

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong is practising subsea cable diplomacy.

Australia doubles down on its subsea cable diplomacy in South Pacific

The rollout of undersea cables has become a major focus of the strategic competition between Western nations and China to gain influence in the Pacific.

  • Updated
  • Staff
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Australian Navy chief Vice Admiral Mark Hammond with counterparts Admiral Ben Key of Britain and US Admiral Lisa Franchetti at the conference in Perth.

AUKUS navy chiefs sound alarm over China, Russia, Iran collaboration

The head of the US Navy warns that “unfettered access” to the sea for trade is at risk from authoritarian countries dubbed the “axis of upheaval”

  • Andrew Tillett

June

Protesters and pro-China supporters on the front lawn of Parliament House ahead of a visit from Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Monday.

Calls to ban WeChat grow after Canberra clashes

Mandarin-language social media platform WeChat has banned coverage of clashes that broke out between Chinese Australians during Premier Li Qiang’s visit.

  • Gus McCubbing
Australian journalist Cheng Lei is “flanked” by two Chinese government officials during a signing ceremony at Parliament House on Monday.

Cheng Lei one day, PNG the next, zigzag diplomacy continues unabated

The circus of embassy staff trying to block vision of journalist Cheng Lei at a ceremony involving the visiting Chinese premier reinforces the difficulty of rebuilding relations with Beijing.

  • Phillip Coorey
Li Qiang in Wellington, New Zealand, this week.

Enter the panda: China ramps up the soft power

Li Qiang”s visit is the first to Australia by a senior Chinese leader in seven years. On the surface, there will be emphasis on co-operation and mutual respect, but underneath tensions and suspicions remain.

  • Andrew Tillett
US Ambassador Kevin Rudd says the LME has not adequately addressed the concerns about higher standards of nickel.

LME failure on nickel due to its own self-interests: Rudd

The Australian ambassador says prices kept artificially low by China were creating a risk of a 20 per cent slump in global supply of the commodity.

  • Matthew Cranston

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/topic/australia-s-china-challenge-1njg