Trade, pandas … and soccer: Albanese walks diplomatic tightrope with Xi and Trump

Tourism and trade will dominate Anthony Albanese’s trip to China next week as he walks a diplomatic tightrope between the Asian superpower’s attempts to build closer ties to US allies rattled by President Donald Trump and Australia’s security connections to the US.

On the trip, beginning on Saturday, Albanese will meet with former Socceroo Kevin Muscat, playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s love for the world game, and tour a major Chinese travel company as he plans to persuade more tourists from the country to come to Australia.

On Friday, Anthony Albanese visited an Australian winemaker who has benefited from the restoration of trade with China.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

But Albanese has been warned not to let national security slip from his agenda by a prominent defence institute, while former foreign minister Bob Carr argued Australia should not be left behind by other regional powers becoming more friendly to China during Trump’s presidency.

Before he flies to Shanghai with his fiancee Jodie Haydon and an Australian business delegation, Albanese signalled that he will use bilateral talks with Xi to raise concerns on regional security and the detention of Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun.

“We [will] raise the full range of issues,” Albanese said in Sydney on Friday. “Australia and China have different political systems. We have therefore different values that are reflected in those political systems. But we’ve got to be able to have that engagement directly, and that’s what we’ll be doing.”

Despite pandas being a key part of diplomacy between Australia and China, including two new giant pandas arriving in Adelaide last year, no new members of the endangered species are expected to be sent as a result of the trip.

One of the soccer players Albanese will meet, Muscat, coaches Shanghai Port FC, a club in the domestic league that was flooded with private riches over the past decade, after Xi put forward an ambitious plan to conquer world football.

China upended its school curriculum to teach children to become soccer stars, but Xi’s decade-old plan to qualify for and win a World Cup has stalled. Its men’s team languishes at 94th in the FIFA world rankings, nestled between Equatorial Guinea and Kosovo.

Hawkish foreign policy expert Justin Bassi, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said feel-good diplomacy should not be prioritised above the security threat posed by China.

“While there’s no doubt the so-called differences will be mentioned in private, any sign that they are secondary to an Australian priority of increased trade and ministerial meetings will result only in greater insecurity for Australia,” said Bassi, a former chief of staff to Liberal foreign minister Marise Payne.

He said China had breached international law in the South China Sea, coerced Taiwan, conducted cyberattacks abroad and aided Russia’s war on Ukraine. “If our economic and technological dependencies did not exist, we would be treating Beijing like Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang,” Bassi argued.

Australians detained by Chinese authorities, Yang Hengjun and Cheng Lei, who was released in 2023.Credit: SMH/The Age

Australia-China relations have been underpinned by the mantra of “stabilisation” since the Albanese government took office, softening Australia’s posture after the Coalition’s blunt warnings on Chinese hegemony and pandemic management spurred trade strikes.

Chinese diplomats this week suggested the relationship should include artificial intelligence sharing and become warmer as they try to charm US allies perturbed by Trump’s agenda.

But Albanese and his ministers have spoken about the trip with a focus on economic benefits, playing a dead bat to requests to allow more Chinese investment in Australia’s critical industries.

Carr, who was foreign minister under Julia Gillard, said Australia and the US’s closest allies in Asia, including South Korea and Japan, were “reshaping policy to take account of the unvarnished hostility that Washington is showing them”.

“The prime minister is reflecting Australia’s simple national interest: an economically fruitful relationship with China that enhances our national interest and enlarges Australia diplomatically,” said Carr, who favours closer ties with China.

“Meanwhile, all of South-East Asia, except the Philippines, is working with both superpowers and even tilting, under Trump, in the direction of Beijing,” he said. “Expect more US partners and allies to do the same. And if China is smart, they will make it easy for them.”

Chinese tourists have flocked to Australia since the pandemic, and Albanese will encourage more travel at a tour of the Trip.com headquarters in Shanghai on Sunday. China is Australia’s largest tourism market, with more than 850,000 visits to Australia by Chinese people in the year to March, making up a quarter of all holidaymakers.

Credit: Matt Golding

Foreign Minister Penny Wong spoke bluntly about China’s aims on Friday, saying Australia was realistic about its intention to alter the regional balance of power by rapidly building its military strength.

“We want to see a region where no one country dominates,” she said.

The Coalition and some experts have criticised Albanese for not having met with Trump since his inauguration in January, while he is meeting Xi for the third time since becoming prime minister. Trump was due to speak with Albanese at G7 talks in Canada last month but left the summit to oversee US bombing of Iran.

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