China and Australia signal warmer ties, but can the good vibes last?

Chinese Foreign Minister Wáng Yì 王毅 met with Australian counterpart Penny Wong today (in English, Chinese) in Beijing to mark the 50th anniversary of official diplomatic relations between their two countries.

The meeting is the first state visit by a top Australian diplomat since 2018, and the two sides agreed to “commence or restart dialogue” on trade and economic issues, climate change, defense, and regional and international issues, per the joint outcomes statement.

• Trade, human rights, and future dialogue between the two countries were discussed, according to the Australian Foreign Ministry statement, marking an “important step toward a stable relationship.”
• Speaking after the meeting, Wong said she had raised the cases of two Australians held in China on spying charges: Yáng Héngjūn 杨恒均, a writer and former Chinese diplomat who China accused of espionage, and Chéng Lěi 成蕾, a former CGTN reporter who China accused of sharing state secrets.
• “We raise that in every single engagement that we are able to,” she said per Bloomberg.
• The statements released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, however, did not make any mention of human rights.

Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 also exchanged congratulatory messages with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Governor General David Hurley for the anniversary, stating that China is willing to work toward “stable and healthy” diplomatic ties.

• Albanese and Xi met on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) summit last month in Bali, the first formal meeting between leaders of the two countries in six years.

The interactions between the two major trade partners signals a thaw in tensions over the past few years. The two countries have been locked in a bitter trade dispute since 2020, after Beijing imposed sanctions on Australian imports in response to Canberra’s accusations of foreign interference in domestic politics and calls for an investigation into COVID origins that year.

• The visit will bring relations “back on track” and “set the relations on the course of sustained growth,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Máo Níng 毛宁 said today.

Not everyone was happy: “Australia has been forced to abandon principles for profit,” tweeted Chinese-born, Australian-resident writer Vicky Xu:

We don’t want to know the origin of COVID anymore nor do we want to provoke China re Uyghurs.

Understandable. Many “democracies” are doing the same.

But celebrating that pivot is just the icing on the cake of shame.

Meanwhile, in the United States, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd — who speaks Mandarin, knows his way around Beijing, and just completed a doctorate at Oxford on Xi Jinping’s worldview and a book titled The Avoidable War — has been appointed Canberra’s new ambassador in Washington, D.C.