Albanese’s Chinese take-away? Blind trust is still off the menu

Anthony Albanese had barely descended the front steps of the Royal Australian Air Force business jet in Beijing before half a dozen military personnel began climbing the rear steps to secure the plane. Dressed in khakis and carrying backpacks, the Australians were ready to guard the aircraft for days.

Every visiting Australian on the tarmac, meanwhile, was switching on a temporary mobile phone that was safely isolated from their networks at home. In an era of regular cyber threats to Australian systems from hackers sometimes traced to China, the instructions for the visit were explicit: burner phones only, please, and do not bring your standard office laptops.

Illustration by Andrew DysonCredit:

The motorcade, with about two dozen cars and buses flanked by motorbikes, took the prime minister and his delegation into the centre of Beijing within half an hour, while police lined the route and brought the Sunday night traffic to a standstill so the visitors could pass. On arrival at the St Regis Hotel, every member of the group knew to behave as if the walls had ears, and eyes.

All the optics were about a generous welcome with high honour. Albanese was greeted by a young girl bearing flowers when he walked the red carpet to the motorcade. All the background, however, was about a deep caution with every possible safeguard. The St Regis was populated with plain-clothes Australian security.

The contrast underlined the way the entire visit, the first by an Australian prime minister to the Chinese capital in seven years, operated on two levels at all times: on the surface, a heavy dose of sugar for a relationship that had grown too sour; below the surface, a guarded approach to avoid giving anything away.

There was so much sugar from the Chinese side, in fact, that the visit was jarring for any Australian who remembered the Chinese warship shining a military-grade laser at an Australian surveillance aircraft in the Torres Strait only last year. The angry rhetoric about Australia in the Chinese newspapers was suddenly replaced by front-page photographs of Albanese being greeted as a friend.

Some of the warmth in Beijing may not help Albanese at home because Peter Dutton will accuse the prime minister of being too friendly to his hosts. The remark from Chinese premier Li Qiang on Tuesday – “people were saying that we have a handsome boy coming from Australia” – is likely to be thrown at the PM in question time.

A schoolgirl presented a gift of flowers to the prime minister as he arrived in Shanghai. Meanwhile, Australian military personnel were securing the PM’s plane.Credit: AAP

The premier’s flattery only came after Albanese was shown the polished steel bayonets of 144 stony-faced soldiers in the Great Hall of the People, stamping their feet so hard the floor seemed to shake. The Chinese Communist Party leaders certainly wanted some of this visit to be a show of force. At the same time, however, they gave Albanese a more effusive welcome than anyone would have imagined a year ago when Foreign Minister Penny Wong cleared the way for this visit by making a quick trip to Beijing.

The flattery was important because it showed the Chinese leaders were laying things on too thick after straining relations too long, not least with economic coercion and sanctions on Australian exports worth $20 billion. The National Peoples’ Congress chairman, Zhao Leji, told Albanese the visit was a “new starting point” in the relationship. This was, at heart, an admission that China needed a new approach.

“I think China has reached an understanding that whatever it was they were trying did not work,” says Simon Jackman, a professor at the University of Sydney and the former head of the United States Studies Centre. At the same time, he says, Labor has stopped the former government’s provocative rhetoric towards China.

PM Anthony Albanese meets with President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People.Credit: AAP

Albanese and Wong seemed very comfortable when they emerged from their formal meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday night. There was no lecture from Xi about the AUKUS alliance. There was no request from Xi for a shift in Australian policy, at least according to Albanese. “It wasn’t transactional,” the prime minister said after the meeting.

The outcome is a success, no question. There is less friction in Australia’s relationship with its biggest trading partner. At the same time, Australia has held its course on foreign policy without crumbling to Chinese pressure.

One request, put by Li and Zhao if not by Xi directly, is that Australia should accept China as a member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact that holds a symbolic and strategic importance among members including Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore.

Japan opposes this ambition, while Albanese offers a form of strategic ambiguity. He will not say if he accepts or rejects the Chinese proposal, only that it requires unanimous agreement from the trade pact members. Behind the scenes, however, there are signals that Australia is on side with Japan.

When Albanese and Wong flew out of Beijing on Tuesday, for instance, their first stop was Tokyo, where Wong held a meeting with her Japanese counterpart, Yoko Kamikawa, while Albanese flew on to the Cook Islands for the Pacific Islands Forum. The Japanese summary of the Tokyo meeting says Wong and Kamikawa agreed to “work closely together” on the trade pact.

Was this really a new starting point between Australia and China? Albanese and Wong have not made any exaggerated claims for the outcome – only that they have stabilised the relationship and restored trade. Lowy Institute executive director Michael Fullilove says the Chinese claim of a new starting point is premature.

Albanese would not re-enact Gough Whitlam’s pose at the “whispering wall” in Beijing’s Temple Of Heaven.Credit: AAP/Archive

“I don’t think there’s a prospect of a reset in the relationship because the factory settings in China have changed,” he says. “Since Xi Jinping became president, Beijing’s internal and external settings have steadily hardened, whether it’s the controls on the Chinese people at home or the very tough behaviour towards neighbours and a campaign of coercive behaviour towards Australia.

“Albanese and Wong have managed the stabilisation process very well. But Beijing’s behaviour towards Australia over the past five years has damaged Australian public opinion towards China. Five years ago, in the Lowy Institute Poll, 52 per cent of Australians trusted China to act responsibly in the world. This year, that figure had dropped to 15 per cent.”

Albanese has been extremely wary of the way his visit could be portrayed. While Li called him an “old friend” and Zhao spoke of Chinese friendship with Australia, Albanese was more circumspect. He mentioned friendship once, upon his arrival in Beijing, but did not use the word in his public remarks with the Chinese leaders. For the most part, he spoke of an economic partnership.

The hugely symbolic moment, when Albanese retraced the steps of Gough Whitlam at the Temple of Heaven to mark his predecessor’s landmark trip to Beijing five decades ago, was managed with caution to the point of paranoia. Whitlam, famously, held his ear to the “whispering wall” that carries someone’s voice to a listener standing further along the curve of stone and brick.

Officials raised the idea of Albanese standing in precisely the same spot, but he was adamant he would not. Why? He did not want a photo that showed him listening to Chinese whispers. Or, more ominously, the Chinese state. And he was right: even an innocent image can be weaponised in today’s social media. The wolf warriors in China might use it to claim he was heeding their warnings, while the conservatives in Australia could use it to frame him as a Chinese pawn.

Albanese took a big step this week to improve ties with China. But he took every step with care.

This is a fraught relationship, after all, with a powerful country that seeks global influence using its military and economic might. So, one of the questions put to Albanese in Beijing – do you trust Xi? – seems beside the point or, worse, naive. The answer was obvious at the Beijing airport. If you really trust a foreign power, you do not guard your aircraft on the tarmac.

Chief political correspondent David Crowe covered the prime minister’s visit to China.