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Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong will welcome the People’s Republic of China Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi to the seventh China-Australia Foreign and Strategic Dialogue in Australia this week.
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PRC Minister Wang Yi, a CPC Central Committee Political Bureau member and director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, will travel to Australia and New Zealand from 17 to 21 March as part of an official visit at the invitation of both countries.
The visit is expected to kick off high-level exchanges between China and Australia, according to PRC Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin.
“China has comprehensive strategic partnerships with both New Zealand and Australia,” he said during a regular press conference on 14 March.
“This year marks the 10th anniversary of President Xi Jinping’s state visit to New Zealand and Australia and also the 10th anniversary of the China-New Zealand and China-Australia comprehensive strategic partnerships.
“After his previous visit to New Zealand and Australia seven years ago, Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit this time will kick off this year’s high-level exchanges between China and the two countries.
“During the visit, Foreign Minister Wang Yi and the foreign ministers and leaders of the two countries will have extensive and in-depth exchanges of views on bilateral relations and international and regional issues of mutual interest.
“China looks forward to working with the two countries to deliver on the common understandings between the leaders, enhance strategic communication, deepen mutual trust, advance exchanges and cooperation, promote the steady and sustained growth of the China-New Zealand and China-Australia comprehensive strategic partnerships and contribute to world peace, stability and prosperity.”
The relationship between China and Australia is definitely under tension but not outwardly volatile.
Australian citizen Cheng Lei, detained in 2020 on national security charges, was released late last year, while Australian-Chinese writer Dr Yang Hengjun (detained in 2019) was sentenced to death earlier this year.
Perhaps one of the most serious altercations in Australian/Chinese relationship also occurred last year with Royal Australian Navy divers injured by a burst of sonar from PLA-N destroyer Ningbo (DDG-139) in November 2023.
Australian Minister Wong, speaking at an AFR Business Summit in Sydney on 12 March, said the current China-Australia relationship will require precise navigation.
“[Looking] at the relationship with China, firstly, bilaterally and also regionally, but in terms of the bilateral, China is not going anywhere. China is not going to stop being China,” she said.
“We are always going to have things where we disagree, and hence you’ve heard us say, we agree, we cooperate where we can, disagree where we must and engage in our national interest.
“I think the central task for leaders and governments and business leaders is to navigate the differences wisely rather than either pretend that there is no navigation required because we can just disengage – which is not in any country’s interest – or the other extreme is to suggest that we don’t actually have differences to navigate. We do.
“Australia fundamentally is not going to change. You know, we are who we are. We have our interests as we see them.
“China is not going to stop being China, and China remains, you know, one of the great powers in our region. We have to work out how it is we navigate those differences, and I think there’s a bilateral element, which is about navigating wisely, dealing with differences appropriately, standing up for … our interests, dealing with China as we should.
“There’s also a regional perspective, which is what sort of region do we want and who do we work with to ensure we have a region that has the attributes or characteristics that serve our interests.”
