What’s on China’s new Australian wish list?

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi Picture: Attila Kisbenedek / AFP

Flying back to Taipei from Beijing, I have to admit: the thermometer check of Australia’s relationship with China was warmer than I had expected.

I’m not the only one. Senior Australian government officials tell me “Project stabilisation” has gone much better than Canberra thought possible when the Albanese government was elected last May. It would be overdoing it to call ours a good relationship with China, but it is less bad than it was.

The government – from the Prime Minister, to the Foreign Minister, to the blob of officials working behind the scenes – deserves credit for that.

China’s toxic relationship with the US and deteriorating relations with other American allies have helped. There is only so much room in Beijing’s naughty corner. Low expectations also have been crucial. It is easier to do better than expected when you don’t expect much at all.

Beijing was mostly in cuddly mode when I and 17 other Australian delegates visited last week for the Australia-China High Level Dialogue. It hit peak panda during our notably warm meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, an encounter in the Great Hall of the People that surprised Australian officials twice: first for happening, then for running for more than an hour.

“I am even more confident about the future of relations,” Wang, President Xi Jinping’s top foreign policy official, told us in a room decorated with a huge landscape of Shanghai’s skyline.

Unfortunately, the rules of last week’s “1.5 track meeting” – involving government officials, retired politicians and people from academe, business, arts and the media – were that we were not to report on Thursday’s dialogue at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, the same beautiful venue that recently hosted Henry Kissinger for, I believe, the 236th time.

Thankfully, those rules don’t apply to my conversations outside the closed-door dialogue.

Scott Morrison was mentioned darkly. No surprise there. Beijing has turned our former prime minister into a bogeyman it accuses of wanting to “act as a spokesperson for Washington”. It said similar things about Malcolm Turnbull. That the current Labor government has an almost identical China policy to its Coalition predecessor is conveniently overlooked by Beijing.

Dealing itself into Australian domestic politics is a strategy with some risk. Beijing will leave Anthony Albanese vulnerable to attack from the Coalition if he returns from China empty-handed. Of course, if its wine tariffs are lifted, if the blacklisting of live Australian lobster does end, if there is good news on the horrific situation of imprisoned Australians Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun, the Prime Minister will return a national hero.

Beijing gave indications it understood that. In a meeting outside the closed-door dialogue, one senior Chinese official told us his government understood the end of China’s 200 per cent wine tariff was a top priority for Australia. “I believe as our bilateral relationship continues to improve … all these issues can be properly resolved,” he said. “I believe that is something we can expect.”

As Beijing likes to say, the ball is in China’s court.

While I can’t quote the wish list issued by Chinese delegates at the dialogue, I can summarise the “want lists” made by Chinese official media, and those in my discussions outside the closed-door meeting and in the weeks leading up to it. These “six wants”, a far from exhaustive list, will be familiar to many readers.

● Beijing wants Australia to allow more Chinese investment. Lithium and other resource projects are a top priority.

● Beijing wants more co-operation on green energy, and more science and technology collaboration.

● Beijing wants Australia to “take a more active role” supporting China’s bid to join the Comprehen­sive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Chinese government claims it has already met “95 per cent of the terms” of the high standards trade pact (a number that raised the eyebrows of more than a few members of the Australian delegation).

● Beijing wants Australia to treat China as a “partner rather than rival” in the Pacific. It wants us to work on joint development projects and stop worrying about Chinese military bases in our strategic neighbourhood.

● Beijing wants Australia to talk up the future of its relationship with China and create “more positive energy” (for example, by issuing visas for Chinese scholars previously blocked by Australian security agencies, including one of China’s delegates at the dialogue).

● Beijing wants Australia to stop working with the US and other allies and partners on creating a “so-called strategic balance” in the region. It wants AUKUS to be packed away, the Quad dismantled and the US-Australia alliance diminished.

A fair bit of that list isn’t very realistic, at least for the foreseeable future. Point six, you may have noticed, asks for no less than the tearing up of Australia’s bipartisan grand strategy to counter the People’s Liberation Army’s alarming build-up and ominously assertive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific.

But there is definitely a lot our two countries can work on together, especially on trade and the transition to a greener economy.

Diversification of Australia’s trade beyond China remains crucial, but so does diversification of Australia’s trade within China. The astounding growth in the past few years of Australian lithium exports to China shows that is not beyond us. Australia will be a richer country if our firms can sensibly participate in China’s monumental transition to a greener economy. We will be poorer if they can’t.

Perhaps the Global Times was a touch enthusiastic in declaring last week’s dialogue “not just a momentous event between China and Australia, but also a reflection of the East-West relationship as a whole”. But I do think it was worth the visa hassle. A closed-door dialogue was never going to end our differences but it may help reduce misperceptions between us. After these past three years, that can only be a good thing.