Chinese, Australian executives extend goodwill as trade grows

Chinese and Australian executives are embracing each others’ countries in post free-trade agreement mutual admiration.

 

Chinese and Australian business executives are embracing each others’ countries in staunch post-free trade agreement mutual admiration, according to new surveys published together yesterday by the National Australia Bank and the Australia-China Relations Institute.

The survey of 1000 Chinese-resident business leaders conducted “blind” — without the respondents being aware of the national source of the report — found that 97 per cent had a favourable overall impression of Australia, 5 per cent above the nearest other country named, Canada.

The same executives rated Australia as the second most important nation to China economically, with an 83 per cent score, behind only the US with 89 per cent. Two thirds of the 580 Australian firms surveyed, reported an overall favourable impression of China.

But only half of the Australian businesses are so far trading with China, compared with 90 per cent of the Chinese companies that are trading with Australia.

The largest engagement of the Chinese firms is through exporting products to Australia, while the Australians’ main involvement is through importing Chinese products.

Former foreign minister Bob Carr, the director of ACRI — which is based at the University of Technology, Sydney — said: “The results are strikingly positive from the Chinese perspective,” which reflect “a glow of goodwill.”

Some negative news such as the blocking of the proposed Chinese investment in beef property S Kidman & Co feeds back to China, he said — but not sufficiently to damage the “predisposition to engage with Australia.”

The polling reflects credit, he said, on the way Australia has managed the relationship, politically, diplomatically and economically.

Mr Carr said that a recent visit to China convinced him that “a soft landing is likely for the economy, and the ‘new normal’ is delivering sustainable economic growth precisely as China has planned.”

If there is better economic news for Australia than the surge of the Chinese middle class, he said, “I am not aware of it.”

Alan Oster, NAB’s chief economist, who has also visited China recently — for the opening of the bank’s new branch in Beijing — said that “consumer-buying services, such as healthcare, are driving China’s service sector up.”

He said that Australian business perceived that, with the FTA concluded, it was better placed to explore options in China — but that overall, it was more domestically focused than Chinese business, which had a more international perspective.

While China’s industrial sector continued to slow, he said, its tertiary — services — sector had already exceeded half the total economy and was now growing at 8.5 per cent per year.