Albanese’s sunny welcome in Shanghai overshadowed by AUKUS dilemma

Anthony Albanese is personally responsible for bringing clear skies to Shanghai during its rainy season, if you believe the quip of a top Chinese Communist Party official in his meeting with the prime minister on Sunday.

Those remarks displayed the tone of recent engagements between Australia and China in Labor’s era of stabilisation: dripping in niceties, with prickly points of difference couched in strictly diplomatic language.

Polls suggest there is strong support for the approach of emphasising the economic potential of the relationship and speaking more softly about China’s more unsettling elements.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, walk along the Bund with former Socceroo and Shanghai Port FC manager Kevin Muscat.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

But intruding into this cozy atmosphere of mutual co-operation is one of the leading China hawks in the Trump administration.

The words of Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon figure reviewing the AUKUS pact, echoed around the room on day one of Albanese’s China visit.

The Pentagon policy chief largely confirmed on Sunday what this masthead reported last week: he wants allies like Australia to be clearer about how they would support the US in potential conflicts, including but not limited to one with China over Taiwan.

The prime minister answers questions about how Australia would respond to conflict over Taiwan, during a press conference on tourism in Shanghai.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Trump’s shadow was always going to loom over the six-day tour through China, but the prime minister is now forced to directly address the dilemma at the heart of Australia’s foreign policy.

Albanese has been elevating the notion of Australian independence from the US in the weeks leading up to this trip, which is one of the longest single-country prime ministerial visits in recent memory.

At a time when Trump is on the nose in Australia and other Western nations, taking a tough line towards his erratic administration is likely to play well domestically.

But as veteran foreign policy watcher James Curran noted last week, Albanese’s rhetoric sits uncomfortably alongside the AUKUS pact, which ties Australia more firmly into the US’s military framework.

Colby also wants Australia to start engaging on early planning for the prospect of conflict.

Australian officials privately say there is no way they would cede sovereignty by making any firm guarantees about how AUKUS submarines would be used. The ANZUS treaty demands consultation but does not provide for automatic involvement in a war. It is also far from clear if the Australian public would support Australia signing up to the sort of assurance Colby wants.

In some ways Colby’s demand is hypocritical because the US itself has long held to the doctrine of strategic ambiguity. This means no clear declarations should be made publicly about what the US military plans to do in the event of a war.

It might frustrate Albanese to have had his first day of a tour of Australia’s biggest trading partner dominated by reporters’ questions about war with China. But China’s aggression in the region – along with US Marines stationed in Darwin, the Pine Gap intelligence installation, and AUKUS – made such questions inevitable.

It would all be far easier for Albanese to focus solely on China’s economic promise. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was recently mesmerised by the development of Shanghai, where all is digital and everything is electrified. If you wanted a picture of the future, he opined earlier this year, it was in Shanghai, not America.

Walking the streets of China’s financial hub, it’s hard to pick out a petrol car. Streets are busy but quiet because of the absence of internal combustion engines.

Drones fly high in the famous Shanghai skyline. The city contains the second-highest number of skyscrapers in the world; some have vivid displays at the top that make the buildings appear translucent or as if water is gushing off them. Audio-visually, the city feels like it could be part of the set of a Blade Runner sci-fi film. Credit cards and cash are barely accepted in stores and restaurants. Ubiquitous apps Alipay and WeChat, the tools that underpin the police state, are used instead.

Albanese and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, strolled the city’s famous Bund, where they met with expat Australian soccer coach Kevin Muscat, who manages Shanghai Port FC. Later in the day the prime minister visited the office of Trip.com, the giant travel company, where he signed a memorandum of understanding with Tourism Australia.

Albanese and Trip.com CEO Jane Sun watch as Tourism Australia executive general manager international markets Robin Mack and Trip.com vice president Edisen Chen sign a memorandum of understanding at the company’s headquarters in Shanghai.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Paul Keating and John Howard marvelled at the city as they looked at the skyline from the same rooftop, years apart.

But China, as many experts and Australian government reviews have concluded, has changed. Albanese’s dead-batting of questions on defence spending and AUKUS looks likely to have a limited shelf life as debate around the globe focuses on matters of security in an unstable world.

After meeting with Muscat, the prime minister will require fancy footwork of his own to balance China’s opportunity against its risks during the remainder of his trip.

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