Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to meet Penny Wong at G20 Bali summit

China has confirmed Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet Penny Wong, ending Beijing’s diplomatic freeze.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong will meet with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Friday.

China has announced that Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet Penny Wong on Friday on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers meeting in Bali, ending an almost three year-long diplomatic freeze between Australia and the Asian superpower.

The formal meeting, believed to be scheduled for Friday afternoon after the conclusion of the G20 talks, was revealed during a regular press briefing by China’s foreign ministry in Beijing as part of a list of bilaterals the country’s top diplomat will hold during his stay on the Indonesian tourist island. The announcement came hours after the Foreign Minister had said Australian ministers were willing to engage with China “and that willingness extends to any meeting in the margins of the G20”.

An Australian government official confirmed the meeting late on Thursday in a short statement: “Australian Foreign Minister will meet the Chinese Foreign Minister in the margins of the G20 on 8 July.”

The last bilateral meeting Mr Wang had with an Australian foreign minister was in September 2019 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York where he declared the two countries’ ties were far more than just “a customer relationship”.

Within months of that meeting, the relationship deteriorated sharply after Beijing erupted following former foreign minister Marise Payne’s call for an inter­national inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Wang met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Bali on Thursday as well as counterparts from India, Indonesia, Argentina, and the EU, and will meet US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Saturday.

Senator Wong’s meeting with Mr Wang comes after Don Farrell walked back the “compromise situation” he said could restore normal trading ties with Beijing.

The Trade Minister had suggested that an “alternative way” outside the WTO process could end the Xi administration’s trade strikes on exports previously worth more than $20bn a year.

Speaking in Bali on Thursday hours before the beginning of a G20 meeting, Senator Wong ­declined to elaborate on her cabinet colleague’s “olive branch” to end China’s trade strike campaign.

“I’ll simply say this … the Australian government believes, and I think the Australian people believe, that the trade measures China has instituted against Australia should be lifted and that remains our position,” the Foreign Minister said.

Senator Farrell’s proposal – made in an interview with Guardian Australia – opened a rhetorical gap with the Foreign Minister days before her first encounter with her Chinese counterpart at the G20 summit.

In a statement, Senator Farrell sought to clarify the Albanese government’s position. “Australia has suffered significantly over the last two or three years with increased tariffs on things like wine, meat, barley, and dairy products,” he said in the statement to The Australian.

“Some of these issues are disputes before the WTO. But it is preferable to sort out these matters via sensible dialogue and negotiation. We have been clear tariffs on Australian exports need to be withdrawn.

Trade Minister Don Farrell. Picture: AAP

“If China removes these tariffs, Australia can cease our actions through the WTO. We won’t need to continue our actions through the WTO if China lifts its tariffs on Australian exports.”

Chinese state media was quick to report the South Australian senator’s proposal.

“Farrell’s calls for trade talks with China shows the Albanese government is mulling how to solve current problems with concrete actions since so many people in Australia, from the business to the education field, have been calling to better relations with China for Australia’s interests,” the party-state tabloid Global Times reported.

Australia has taken China to the WTO over its 80 per cent barley tariff and more than 200 per cent impost on wine.

Most of the exports black-­listed by China – including thermal, coking coal and lobsters – have been done unofficially, complicating any potential Australian WTO action.

In June, Beijing rejected Senator Farrell’s request to meet his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of a WTO summit in Geneva. Following that rebuff, the Australian government did not make a public request for a bilateral meeting between Senator Wong and her Chinese counterpart in Bali.

The bilateral meeting will have a crowded agenda, including: the imprisonment of Australians Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun; China’s sweeping trade coercion campaign; changes to Australia’s foreign investment regime that have blocked Chinese acquisitions; Beijing’s anger about public criticism of its repression in Xinjiang and Hong Kong; and Canberra’s concern about President Xi Jinping’s “no limits” friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the People Liberation Army’s menacing of Taiwan.

China has also continued its push into the Pacific, including an increased policing presence in Solomon Islands, which Senator Wong said would be discussed at the Pacific Islands Forum.