Albanese ‘to travel to China’ but opposition warns trade sanctions should be lifted first

Hiroshima: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has told world leaders he intends to travel to China, signalling he will push ahead with stabilising the relationship with Beijing despite ongoing trade sanctions and the arbitrary detention of two Australians.

Albanese has not publicly confirmed a date for the trip, but the 50th anniversary of Gough Whitlam’s first visit to China as prime minister in October is looming as a symbolic marker for Canberra and Beijing after years of disputes over human rights, national security and trade.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaking in Hiroshima on Sunday morning. Credit: Christopher Jue

“I’ve informed our partners that I do intend to travel to China at some time in the future,” Albanese said in Hiroshima where he is attending the G7 summit. “That has been welcomed. People regard it as very positive that Australia is in dialogue with China. You need dialogue to get understanding.”

But the federal opposition said Albanese should not travel to Beijing unless the Chinese government makes clear it will lift all restrictions on Australian imports.

“I think Australia does deserve to have absolute clarity that these trade sanctions are going to be lifted, and that clarity should be there before the prime minister entertains a formal state visit to Beijing,” opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham told the ABC’s Insiders program.

“Why? Because China is acting very clearly in breach of its commitments to Australia.”

While welcoming the improvement in bilateral relations, including the lifting of a Chinese ban on Australian timber imports last week, Birmingham said Australia should expect “nothing less” than for China to entirely lift all sanctions on Australian goods, including on wine and barley.

This should come without China expecting any concessions from Australia, he said.

Albanese said shortly after arriving in Hiroshima on Friday that it was important “that any of the impediments to trade between China and Australia be lifted”.

Australians Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun remain in jail in China on vague national security charges. “On every opportunity we raise those issues,” said Albanese. “Cheng Lei hasn’t even been able to speak to her children. It’s not appropriate. We need transparency. Australia will continue to make representations to China on behalf of our citizens.”

Birmingham said the detention of the two Australians was a “very important and significant matter” and China’s lack of transparency about their circumstances was “completely unacceptable”.

Albanese will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Hiroshima on Sunday. The bilateral meetings follow a late-night Quad meeting on Saturday that committed to infrastructure development and funding telecommunications networks and undersea cables in a push from the four countries – Japan, Australia, India and the United States – to contain China’s influence in the Asia Pacific.

The meeting was scheduled to take place in Sydney on Wednesday but was rushed forward to Hiroshima and squeezed in before a G7 leaders dinner after the US debt crisis forced US President Joe Biden to shorten his trip.

The leaders of Australia, Japan, the US and India held a Quad meeting on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima.Credit: Christopher Jue

“President Biden could not have done more than what we’ve done together over the last few days to have a Quad leaders meeting here,” Albanese said.

Biden apologised to Albanese in Hiroshima for having to cancel the visit to Sydney. “President Biden has said to me a number of times in his words ‘you guys are punching above your weight’ and Australia should not underestimate that,” said Albanese.

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday highlighted Australia’s role in forcing China to “re-evaluate” its position in the region.

Clinton took to the stage in Washington to talk up the partnerships America had created in the face of China’s growing aggression.

“I was of the opinion that Xi would make his move against Taiwan sometime in three to four years of really consolidating his power,” Clinton said, speaking at the Financial Times Weekend Festival in Washington DC on Saturday (US time).

“But I think Ukraine has really set him back. What has happened in Ukraine has had a significant impact, in my view, on the Chinese leadership. I also give the Biden administration credit as I think their China policy has been quite adept and by that I mean in bringing this so-called Quad together ... [and] working with the UK to deliver nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.”

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd also appeared at the event in his new role as Australia’s ambassador to the US, warning a war between the US and China would have “unspeakable consequences” with no simple means of retreat.

He said the US, Australia and its allies should continue engaging in “an active campaign of expanded deterrence to cause Xi Jinping to think twice and thrice about whether [he] could get away with any unilateral military action against Taiwan,” the democratic island that China claims as its own.

The aim, he said, was to “stabilise the US-China relationship”, which he said was “both an initiative from the administration and is now finally being reciprocated out of Beijing.”

Albanese said he had been advocating for guard rails to be put in place to avoid geopolitical tensions spilling over into war.

“You need dialogue to avoid miscalculation,” he said. “The lack of guard rails out there in international relations is of concern. And it’s important that they be put in place, the sort of guardrails that were in place for a long period of time during the period of US-Soviet competition during the Cold War.”

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