When Anthony Albanese sits down with Xi Jinping on Tuesday, he’s likely to be greeted as an old friend.
It’ll be their fourth meeting, and their second on Xi’s home turf – a stark contrast to Albanese’s fraught efforts to secure a first face-to-face meeting with US President Donald Trump.
Despite economic challenges and unfounded chatter suggesting his authority is waning, Xi remains all-powerful at home, while Trump’s chaotic presidency has helped paint China as a relatively stable force in world affairs.
Albanese also believes he is sitting pretty, after his landslide election win, and has been untroubled by curly media questions about the comparative states of Australia’s relationships with its closest ally and biggest trading partner.
In a particularly strong performance on Sunday, he emerged unscathed after being peppered with questions on whether Australia would fight with the US if it found itself in a war with China. All while standing on Chinese soil.
Albanese and his team believe a Trump meeting will happen before too long, and irritants in the US relationship on defence spending and the AUKUS pact will ultimately be resolved.
This, of course, remains to be seen, given Trump’s mercurial nature and Albanese’s sharp repudiation of suggestions Australia isn’t pulling its weight in the alliance. He is also confident the China relationship is in a good place.
Bilateral trade is humming along nicely at more than $300bn a year, and he and the country’s resources chiefs are moving to insulate the vital iron ore trade from future shocks by getting ahead of the hoped-for green steel revolution.
There are, of course, an array of risks. But China’s push to be seen as the good guy in global affairs will ensure a charm offensive by Xi and Premier Li Qiang. Two years ago, Li buttered Albanese up by labelling him a “handsome boy”.
Expect more flattery this time around as Beijing looks to capitalise on Labor’s determined push to talk up the positives in the relationship while raising any problem issues behind closed doors.
Beijing’s top diplomat in Australia, Xiao Qian, laid the groundwork for the trip’s key meetings by suggesting an increase in defence spending by Australia would undermine the nation’s living standards, and that Australia and China should co-operate on artificial intelligence.
The former was an audacious foray on Australia’s domestic affairs for which he was admonished by senior Australian officials.
The latter is a non-starter, given the complete absence of trust within Australia – and the West more broadly – in Chinese technology.
Mr Albanese is also set to dead-bat calls for Australia to back China’s bid to join the 12-nation trade-Pacific partnership free-trade deal.
This won’t surprise Beijing in the slightest, but it will be compelled to reiterate its flimsy case.
Its most pressing annoyance with Canberra is the government’s pledge to bring the Port of Darwin – owned by Chinese company Landbridge – back into Australian hands.
This will be seen as a dangerous precedent for China, and a blow to its standing in the wider region.
The suggestion, by a well-connected Chinese blogger, that such a move would lead to economic consequences is an ominous one, raising the prospect of a repeat of China’s $20bn in Covid-era trade bans, the last of which was lifted only six months ago.
But Albanese, in his strongest comments in China to date, vowed on Monday to reject any request by Xi to dump the election promise. Xi is unlikely to push too hard on the issue for now, but if Landbridge is forced to divest the port against its will, Australia can expect a fresh campaign of economic coercion.
As the PM knows, today’s cuddly panda can turn into a wolf warrior in the blink of an eye.
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