China warns Anthony Albanese over new security agreement with Japan

Beijing says Canberra’s upgraded security agreement with Tokyo has upset the ‘positive trend’ in its relationship with China.

Anthony Albanese with Fumio Kishida in Perth over the weekend. Picture: AFP

Beijing has warned Anthony Albanese that Australia’s upgraded security agreement with Japan has upset the recent “positive trend” in its relationship with China.

China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday evening told Canberra that its strengthened defence partnership with Tokyo “should not target any third party” or start “a new Cold War” group.

“Any actions that undermine the peace and stability of the region...will be vigilantly and jointly opposed by the people of the region,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin.

Hours earlier the China Daily, the Communist Party’s most authoritative English language masthead, warned Canberra that it was undermining its relations with Beijing with the new agreement.

“The current Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, elected in May, has generally shown a positive attitude toward his country’s ties with China by taking action to correct his predecessor’s wrongs.

“But upgrading Australia’s bilateral security agreement with Japan is not in line with that positive trend,” the party-state masthead said in an editorial on Monday.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida flew to Perth to sign the agreement with Mr Albanese. It was the fourth meeting between the two leaders during the first six months of the Albanese government, a sign of the growing strategic alignment between Japan and Australia.

The China Daily said the increased co-operation between Canberra and Tokyo was the result of their joint failure to understand the real driver of instability in the region: the US.

“It is not China’s ‘assertiveness’, but the United States’ ambition to contain China’s rise with the aid of its allies that has caused the ‘deteriorating security outlook for their region’,” the China Daily argued.

“Canberra should not let itself be swayed in the wrong direction by Washington.”

The new Japanese-Australian security agreement was signed on Saturday, the day before Xi Jinping’s term as the Communist Party’s general secretary was extended for five years.

On Sunday, Mr Xi — the most powerful Chinese political figure in the 21st century — unveiled the team of loyalists who will implement his policies until 2027, when he is expected to extend his rule by another five years.

In recent months, Beijing has indicated it wants to improve its fraught relationship with Australia, its most important source of iron ore.

Mr Xi will meet Mr Albanese at a G20 leaders’ meeting in Bali in mid-November, although a separate bilateral meeting has not been confirmed.

Victor Shih, an expert on elite Chinese politics at UC San Diego, said it was vital that liberal-democratic leaders pierce the thick “information filter” around China’s autocratic leader.

Xi Jinping will meet Anthony Albanese at the G20 leaders’ meeting in Bali next month. Picture: Getty Images

“It’s important for foreign leaders to meet with (Xi) directly to say: Look, this thing that you just did is very counter-productive … It really made a lot of voters angry, and it’s going to make it harder for the two countries to have a good relationship,” said Dr Shih.

“Whether he accepts this kind of information or not, who knows? But I think talking to him is still much better than not talking to him.”

In September, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Penny Wong that Beijing wanted to meet Australia “halfway”, although Beijing has not unwound any of the sweeping trade bans it imposed on Australia in 2020.

At the recent congress, Mr Wang was promoted to the Communist Party’s 25 member Politburo, indicating he will likely replace Yang Jiechi to be Mr Xi’s top foreign policy adviser.

Mr Xi’s demands that his diplomats show more “fighting spirit” on the international stage has precipitated a sharp rise in negative sentiment towards China in liberal-democracies around the world.

Last week, one of China’s most senior diplomats in Britain said it was his “duty” to rough up a pro-Hong Kong protester, who was hospitalised after being dragged into the Chinese consulate in Manchester and beaten.