Hardest issues ignored in PM, Xi charm offensive

In view of rising tensions between the US and China and the latter’s unprecedented military build-up, Xi Jinping’s willingness to push China’s relationship with Australia “further” and urging Anthony Albanese to do the same “unswervingly”, no matter “how the international landscape may evolve”, as the Chinese leader said in the Great Hall of the People on Tuesday, had a sense of unreality. Anthony Albanese, at his press conference after the meeting, spoke strongly on the benefits and further potential of the bilateral economic relationship. His fourth meeting with Mr Xi also underlined the fact the Prime Minister has yet to meet Donald Trump, eight months after the US election.

Mr Albanese, to his credit, raised several contentious issues with Mr Xi, including the plight of Chinese-Australian writer and democracy activist Yang Hengjun, who has been detained in China since 2019. He also made it clear that Beijing should have given Australia more notice of the live-fire exercises its navy conducted over the Tasman Sea in February, forcing 49 commercial airlines to divert flights. It was while he was discussing that incident during his press conference that a sense of unreality emerged in Mr Albanese’s comments. Both China and Australia conducted exercises, he said, recounting a point made by Mr Xi, who reportedly had said, in effect, that China’s ships would conduct exercises wherever they wanted in international waters. But exercises such as Talisman Sabre, currently under way and involving 35,000 military personnel from 19 allied nations, have none of the menace, provocation and intimidation of three People’s Liberation Army Navy warships circumnavigating Australia and conducting drills with live fire. Mr Albanese noted that there had been “no breach of international law” but, rightly, he restated concerns about lack of notice by Chinese authorities. The Australian Defence Force, alarmingly, was alerted about the live fire by a Virgin Airlines pilot flying over the Tasman at the time.

It was clear from Mr Albanese’s press conference that Mr Xi, unsurprisingly, gave nothing away as regards the strategic intentions behind China’s military build-up, which is unprecedented since World War II. As Foreign Minister Penny Wong said last week, China has chosen to “wield its strength” in a way that threatens regional security. Australia was realistic, she said, about the superpower’s “objectives in changing the regional balance of power”. Neither did Mr Xi raise Mr Albanese’s plan to strip Chinese company Landbridge of its lease over the Port of Darwin. He did not need to do so. In a pointed warning, Chinese social media influencer Lu Wenxing has said reclaiming the port could trigger countermeasures from Beijing, such as restricting Australian companies’ market access in China or tightening imports of resources such as iron ore.

On one of the most pertinent strategic issues of the moment, Mr Xi did not raise the pressure the US is placing on Australia and allies such as Japan to join a potential conflict against China over Taiwan. Mr Xi has told the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. That problem, along with the need to build up Australia’s defences, reinvigorate our most important alliance with the US, and prepare for his first meeting with Mr Trump, awaits Mr Albanese when he returns from being feted in the Middle Kingdom. His challenges, and those of the ADF, have not been helped by Malcolm Turnbull’s conversations with Elbridge Colby about what he regards as the defects and challenges of the AUKUS pact before Mr Colby’s confirmation in March as the US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy. Mr Turnbull has been a sustained critic of AUKUS, Joe Kelly writes, arguing that the deal will not work for Australia. Mr Colby is leading the Pentagon review into the future of the pact.

In striving to put dialogue at the centre of the Australia-China relationship and back free trade under the 10-year-old bilateral free trade agreement, the Prime Minister is pursuing the national interest. Concurrently, he and the government must do more to come to grips with the realpolitik of the security challenges facing the nation and the region.