Yes, pandas are adorable. But they can’t hide national differences

Even at a diplomatic encounter as soft and fluffy as a trip to a panda enclosure, the harsh realities of the China-Australia relationship managed to break through the bonhomie of Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s visit.

Sunday marked the first visit to Australia by a Chinese premier in seven years, and Adelaide turned it on with a sparkling winter’s day. The sun glowing in a clear blue sky was an apt metaphor for the dramatic thaw in tensions since Labor came to power. Two years ago, Chinese ministers were not even taking calls from their Australian counterparts, let alone hopping on a plane to South Australia.

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas and Chinese Premier Li Qiang with giant panda Wang Wang at the Adelaide Zoo.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

China’s second most powerful official came to the city of churches bearing a gift. Adelaide Zoo, he announced, would soon be lent a new pair of “beautiful, lovely and adorable pandas” to replace Wang Wang and Fu Ni, the beloved but unfortunately infertile duo set to return to China after 15 years.

China uses pandas as part of its diplomatic arsenal, deploying them around the globe to signal which nations are in and out of favour. The message of Li’s visit was clear: Australia is no longer in the diplomatic doghouse.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Trade Minister Don Farrell and South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas were all smiles, thanking Li for his generosity.

As the officials engaged in panda diplomacy for the cameras, anti-Chinese Communist Party protesters could be heard chanting “Uyghur lives matter” and “Human lives over profit” from the zoo’s entrance a few hundred metres away.

Waving Uyghur, Tibetan and Hong Kong flags, the protesters urged Australia not to be wooed by “panda propaganda”.

Disrupting what would have otherwise been a cloying love-in, the protests highlighted the uncomfortable fact that Australia’s biggest trading partner is not only an economic superpower but a repressive autocracy and one of the world’s worst human rights abusers. No such demonstration, it goes without saying, could take place in China without mass arrests.

Supporters of the CCP were equally represented outside the zoo, blasting patriotic anthems and holding signs welcoming Li to Adelaide. The Chinese diaspora in Australia is not as anti-regime as it once was, with recent arrivals inclined to feel more positively about the CCP than those who arrived after the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. Politicians are aware of this as they chase votes in this increasingly powerful electoral cohort.

Li landed in Adelaide on Saturday night with an optimistic message that “China-Australia relations were back on track after a series of twists and turns, generating tangible benefits to the people of both countries”.

The premier’s arrival statement also carried a warning, perhaps even a threat.

“History has proven that seeking common ground while shelving differences and mutually beneficial co-operation are the valuable experience in growing China-Australia relations and must be upheld and carried forward,” he said.

It was a sentence that went to the heart of the different and irreconcilable way Australia and China view the relationship.

Beijing believes that shelving differences – like the human rights violations raised by the protesters outside the zoo – is key to getting along. Canberra believes that raising points of dispute must be part of a mature and productive relationship, even as the Albanese government tries to avoid the confrontational rhetoric its Coalition government predecessor occasionally deployed.

China uses pandas as part of its diplomatic arsenal, deploying them around the globe to signal which nations are in and out of favour.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has vowed to raise matters of concern – such as the suspended death sentence handed to Chinese-Australian academic Yang Hengjun and a Chinese fighter jet dropping flares near an Australian navy helicopter – during Li’s visit. How forcefully and publicly he conveys these concerns remains to be seen.

After the zoo, the officials made their way to the Penfolds Magill wine estate, chosen to celebrate the resumption of Australian wine exports to China in March after the removal of punishing tariffs introduced by Beijing in 2020. Australian winemakers are delighted that their wares are once again flowing into what was their largest export market.

The lunch menu – starting with an entree of South Australian rock lobster – was as rich in symbolism as it was in flavour. Rock lobster and crayfish are the major trade disputes yet to be resolved between Canberra and Beijing. Australian officials are confident an announcement on the resumption of seafood exports to China is imminent and hope Li’s Adelaide lunch could give Beijing the final push it needs.

Li’s visit to Canberra on Monday for his official meeting with Albanese will be a more substantive and serious affair than his Adelaide excursion. But there is no expectation of a joint press conference at which Li can be confronted with tough questions about human rights abuses in China, the harassment of anti-CCP activists in Australia by foreign agents or the recent dangerous encounters between the Chinese and Australian militaries.

The Chinese premier may be on Australian soil, but concessions to democracy only go so far.

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