Trade Minister Don Farrell to launch new attempt to meet with China

Trade Minister Don Farrell has received a friendly letter from his Chinese counterpart that could be the beginning of the end of Beijing’s trade crusade against Australia.

Trade Minister Don Farrell will again offer “the hand of friendship” to China in efforts to clear Beijing’s $20bn-a-year trade blockages against Australia.

In further signs the relationship between Canberra and Beijing is thawing, Senator Farrell revealed China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao congratulated him on his new role in a letter sent last week.

“I am obviously going to write back and thank him for that and make it clear that if an opportunity arises in the future … I’d love to sit down and have chat to him about some of our trade issues,” he told The Advertiser.

Senator Farrell said he had already “stuck out the hand of friendship” and offered to meet with Mr Wang on the sidelines of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) summit in Geneva last month, but the commerce minister was unable to find time.

Senator Farrell labelled the congratulatory letter – sent well over a month since he was sworn in – a “positive sign” and said he hoped to meet Mr Wang by year’s end.

Trade Minister Don Farrell said he would write back to Wang Wentao to propose another meeting.

Evoking assassinated US president John F. Kennedy, whose daughter Caroline is arriving in Canberra on Friday as Washington’s new ambassador to Australia, Senator Farrell said: “Never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate”.

“I think that is a pretty good idiom to live by in the trade space,” he said.

The diplomatic development comes as Chinese bureaucrats consider ending the nearly two-year trade ban on Australian coal – reports which Senator Farrell described as “rumours”.

“It’s early days in the discussions. Obviously if it turns out to be true it is very good news, but we are adopting a ‘wait and see’ attitude for the time being to see whether or not anything more comes of it,” Senator Farrell said.

China Daily, an English mouthpiece newspaper for the Chinese Communist Party, noted a “potential shift” to import more Australian coal in an editorial this week.

The paper blamed the ban on the “anti-China policies” of the “two successive Australian governments”.

China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao sent a letter of congratulations to his Australian counterpart, Trade Minister Don Farrell. Picture: Jin Liwang/Xinhua via Getty

Relations between Beijing and Canberra looked to take a step backwards on Monday when nationalistic Chinese tabloid The Global Times warned it was “increasingly difficult to distinguish” Defence Minster Richard Marles with his “extremely anti-China Liberal predecessor Peter Dutton”.

Senator Farrell said he wanted to lift trade blockages on wine, barley, meat and crayfish, all of which “particularly affects South Australian producers”.

“We’ve been hit hard by what now constitutes about $20bn of lost business,” Senator Farrell said.

The South Australian senator said he would be willing to drops several cases against China with the WTO if it ended trade bans.

“We’d much prefer not to have those cases, but that’s the only option China has given us at the moment to resolve these issues,” he said.

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Originally published as Trade Minister Don Farrell to launch new attempt to meet with China