Beijing huffs about Albanese government’s ‘two-faced policy towards China’

China’s state media has delivered a stark ultimatum to the Albanese government while Australian delegates meet in Beijing for high-level diplomatic talks.

Beijing has repeatedly complained about decisions taken by Canberra after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s meeting with President Xi Jinping in Beijing in July. Picture: AP

Beijing has warned Canberra that it “cannot butter bread on both sides”, as Xi Jinping’s government becomes increasingly frustrated with Anthony ­Albanese’s “two-faced policy ­towards China”.

The warning was delivered as former Labor trade minister Craig Emerson and former Howard government minister Warwick Smith led a track 1.5 dialogue – featuring official and unofficial participants – which began on Wednesday with senior Chinese counterparts in Beijing.

It also came as Dan Andrews’s successor as Victoria’s Premier, Jacinta Allan, continued a four-city tour of China as she tries to attract Chinese investment, tourism and students, while the Prime Minister has been in Port Moresby trying to get Papua New Guinea to sign a transformational China-focused defence treaty.

Beijing again used the state-owned China Daily to deliver its sharp critique of the federal Australian government, which has frustrated President Xi by continuing to deepen security links with America and fellow US allies in Asia even as the diplomatic and trade relationship with China has improved.

“[Australia’s] two-faced policy towards China is not sustainable in the long run,” the China Daily wrote in an editorial that was timed for the annual “Australia-China High Level Dialogue”, which began with a dinner in Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on Wednesday evening.

“The Australian government is urged to develop a rational perception of China as not only Australia’s largest trading partner but also a responsible major country committed to promoting peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond,” the masthead added.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan and state Labor MPS in Beijing on the first day of their visit to China. Her Labor state government is taking what Beijing calls a “rational” approach in its relations with China. Picture: Premier's Office

Pointed editorials in the Chinese government’s most authoritative English language newspaper have become increasingly frequent since Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

In recent months, Beijing has used the mouthpiece, which is closely read by the diplomatic corps in China, to express its hopes that Canberra might leave the AUKUS defence technology partnership and, last week, to express the Chinese government’s fury at Australia’s co-ordination with Japan over what China calls its “core interests”.

The latest spray comes only days after Australia was selected as the “guest country of honour” at the China International Fair for Trade in Services, or CIFTIS, which was held last week in Beijing.

Australian businesses and institutions that exhibited at the marquee trade show, including Penfolds’ parent company Treasury Wine Estates, a host of universities including ANU, Deakin and Adelaide University, and Tourism Australia, have been delighted by the favourable coverage in Chinese media.

Chinese government officials have long complained that Australia has worked with America and other allies and partners to constrain China’s military power even as China has become Australia’s biggest export market.

That duality was represented in the stately room in Beijing on Wednesday evening at the banquet for the “High Level Dialogue” where, along with Dr Emerson and Mr Smith (dubbed “Mr China” for his decades of business experience in the country), Australia’s delegates included Gerhard Veldsman, an executive at Gina Rinehart’s China-focused iron ore company Hancock, Luke Sheehy, the head of Universities Australia (whose members are hugely dependent on high fee-paying Chinese international students), and David Jochinke, president of the National Farmers Federation (the peak body for many of the companies caught up in China’s 2020-24 trade coercion campaign).

As the China Daily huffed about Anthony Albanese’s China policy, the PM meet with Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister James Marape in Port Moresby to sign a mutual communique, part of Canberra’s efforts to deepen ties with Pacific nations to counter Beijing’s rising influence Picture: AFP

Also in the Australian delegation were DFAT deputy secretary Elly Lawson (who is on Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s shortlist to be Australia’s next ambassador to Japan), Australia’s ambassador in China Scott Dewar (the AUKUS envoy during the Morrison government), Lowy Institute senior fellow Richard McGregor (an internationally respected expert on the Chinese Communist Party) and former Royal Australian Navy officer Jennifer Parker, now an expert at the ANU National Security College and one of the Australia’s most eloquent AUKUS supporters.

The formal dialogue will be held behind closed doors on Thursday. Delegates have been told to not publicise their discussions.

Senior Australian officials have characterised interventions by the Chinese delegation at previous iterations of the annual “High Level Dialogue” by the Chinese delegation, as sounding like recitations of strident editorials in Chinese state media.

Wednesday’s China Daily editorial titled: “Canberra cannot butter bread on both sides” offered insight into Beijing’s talking points for its highly co-ordinated delegates.

The editorial claimed the Albanese government’s new $50m trade initiative announced this week underscored the “pragmatic approach” to China, casting it as an effort to “bolster trade with China” despite Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell calling the two-year program a plank in the Albanese’ governments “trade diversification agenda”.

Trade Minister Don Farrell, on the rooftop of the Peace Hotel in Shanghai, has been a frequent visitor to China since the Albanese government was first elected in 2022. He also continued efforts to diversify trade by growing markets other than China. Picture: Will Glasgow

The Beijing masthead then fumed about recent military exercises with The Philippines and the US, which it described as “a de facto move to embolden The Philippines to continue its provocative actions targeting China”.

The state owned masthead said Australia needed to “confront the stark contradiction between its economic interests and its security alignment”.

“While benefiting from trade with China, Australia continues to try and sustain the AUKUS arrangement, a US-led mechanism targeting China, and lend support to The Philippines in the South China Sea. Such behaviour exposes Australia’s implicit calculations to butter both sides of its bread at the same time,” the China Daily continued.

“Although China attaches importance to economic and trade relations with Australia, it will under no circumstances tolerate such infringements on its core interests … To create the necessary conditions to materialise mutually beneficial co-operation in not only economy and trade but also other fields, the Albanese government knows what to do,” the Beijing mouthpiece concluded.