‘The first step to better ties with Beijing’, says Penny Wong after meeting Chinese foreign minister

Penny Wong says Australia has taken an ‘important first step’ towards stabilising ties with China following the first bilateral meeting in almost three years with its top diplomat Wang Yi.

Penny Wong with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Bali on Friday. Picture: Johannes P. Christo

Foreign Minister Penny Wong says Australia has taken an “important first step” towards stabilising ties with China following the first bilateral meeting in almost three years with its top diplomat Wang Yi, at which Beijing’s detention of Australian citizens and its trade coercion were raised.

Senator Wong met her Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers meeting in Bali on late Friday after earlier this week calling on China to use its influence with Russia as a “no limits” partner to help end the war in Ukraine.

Senator Wong said after the meeting that the two ministers “spoke frankly and we listened carefully to each other’s priorities and concerns”.

But, she added, it would “take time and work” to mend ties.

The meeting in Bali follows Defence Minister Richard Marles’ meeting with his Chinese counterpart, General Wei Fenghe, in Singapore last month, which represented the first face-to-face minister-to-minister dialogue between the two nations since late 2019. A request by Trade Minister Don Farrell to meet his Chinese counterpart in Geneva was rebuffed. Former foreign minister Marise Payne last spoke to her Chinese counterpart by phone in early 2020, soon after the first cases of Covid-19 were ­detected in Wuhan.

“It’s fair to say we both recognised it’s a first step for both our nations,’’ Senator Wong said after her meeting with the Chinese Foreign Minister. “We’ve got a path to walk and we will see if it can lead to a better place between the two countries.’’

“It’s unsurprising that we would raise consular cases including Ms Cheng Lei and Dr Yang, and others,” she said referring to the Chinese Australian journalist and Chinese Australian writer Yang Hengjun being held on spurious national security charges.

“Obviously we discussed the trade blockages that exist and it remains the government’s position that those trade blockages should be revoked.”

China’s trade reprisals against Australia began after Senator Payne called in April 2020 for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19. Since then, at least $20bn in Australian exports of coal, wine, lobsters and other products have since been hit by Chinese tariffs and unofficial bans.

In a readout of her opening comments released late on Friday, Senator Wong told her Chinese counterpart that In the context of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, a deepening global food and fuel crisis and supply chain shocks “Australia will stand up for international law and the UN charter and we will urge other countries to do so”.

She also told Mr Wang that “Australia’s Government has changed but our national interests and our policy settings have not.

“And Australia will speak as necessary on the issues that matter to our nation and our people – we will do so calmly and consistently.”

Senator Wong said she had also conveyed Australia’s view about international law and the importance of the UN charter to Wang Yi in relation to Russia’s war on Ukraine, which China has refused to criticise.

Asked whether China had demanded anything concrete from Australia during the meeting, she replied: “I think the Chinese position is well known, the issues of difference is well known, and what was put to me reflected what we know China’s position to be.”

The foreign minister said she believed it was in both nations’ interests that another meeting be scheduled soon though “but that would require both countries to agree to do so”.

“I think all of these issues will take some time. And I think there is a path we are walking and we will take one step at a time in the interests of the country,” she said.

“We do have our differences but as I have previously said we believe it’s in the interests of both countries for the relationship to be stabilised and this Australian government will always seek to ­resolve issues calmly and consistently under the comprehensive strategic partnership and in accordance with Australia’s national interests.”

The highly anticipated meeting was the last in a whirlwind schedule of bilateral talks that on Friday included sit-downs with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, as well as foreign ministers from France, Germany and Canada on the sidelines of the G20.

Senator Wong hailed the G20 meeting on her way out of Bali on Friday night as a “constructive meeting that reaffirmed the importance of multilateralism … when the world faces so many challenges from the war in Ukraine, Russia’s illegal, immoral invasion of Ukraine, to food ­security, to climate change”.

Her meeting with Mr Wang came a day after he warned G20 nations against linking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with Beijing’s threats to Taiwan.

“It is obviously double standards. Beijing rejects any attempt to compare the Ukraine crisis with the Taiwan question and will firmly safeguard its core interests,” Mr Wang said.

Anthony Albanese last week said Russia’s failed bid to take Ukraine showed “attempts to impose change by force on a sovereign country meets resistance”, prompting a scathing editorial in the China Daily that warned that high hopes of a reset in bilateral relations were “diminishing by the day”.

Asked about Wang Yi’s warning before Friday’s G20 talks, Senator Wong said Russia’s actions clearly constituted an abrogation of the UN charter and international law that holds that “another state will not by threat or force compromise or infringe on the territory integrity of another”.

“In relation to Taiwan, there is a bipartisan position on one China policy. I think there’s a bipartisan position now that we support the status quo and that there be no unilateral change to that status quo,” she said.

Analysts in both countries have cautioned that any improvement in the bilateral relationship will be modest.