Adelaide
Chinese Premier Li Qiang engaged in a little “panda diplomacy” on Sunday, visiting a historic vineyard to celebrate the thawing of once-frosty trade ties with Australia.
Premier Li Keqiang is the highest-ranking Chinese official to visit Australia in seven years, and the four-day trip brings with it the prospect of expanded trade after Beijing lifted a range of punitive measures on key Australian exports.
China is by far Australia's largest trading partner, accounting for about 30 percent of Australian exports last year, including key commodities iron ore and coal.
Two-way trade is expected to reach AUD327 billion (US$216 billion) in 2023.
Prime Minister Li visited Adelaide Zoo in a sunshine where he announced that China would loan new “adorable” giant pandas to replace the popular Wang Wang and Hooni.
Adelaide's pandas, who have not produced any offspring since arriving in China in 2009, are due to return to China by the end of the year.
“They must have missed their homeland so much,” said Li, China's second most powerful man after President Xi Jinping.
He said China was offering to donate the pandas to honour the wishes of Adelaide-based Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who has sought to stabilize ties with Beijing.
Ms Wong said her children “will be very happy” to hear the news, and welcomed it as a “symbol of goodwill”.
Lee then joined Wong for lunch at the 19th century McGill Estate Vineyard, originally home to Penfolds Winery and now part of Australia's global winemakers, Treasury Wine Estates.
Wine was among Australia's exports, along with coal, timber, barley, beef and lobster, hit by sanctions imposed by China in 2020 amid a diplomatic rift with the previous Conservative government.
These sanctions are estimated to cost Australian exporters A$20 billion (US$13 billion) a year, of which A$1 billion is lost to the wine industry.
“Permanent tension”
The tariffs have been gradually lifted since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government took office in 2022 and adopted a softer diplomatic stance towards China, with lobster being one of the few exports that still faces trade barriers.
Mr Li and Mr Albanese are due to hold closed-door talks in Canberra on Monday and the talks are expected to cover conflict issues such as foreign influence, human rights, “dangerous” Chinese military behaviour in the region and the two countries' rivalry in the Pacific.
China's growing influence in the South Pacific remains a key point of tension as it seeks to expand security and economic ties with island nations that are traditional allies of Australia.
“There's always going to be conflict in the Pacific, that's the reality,” Wong said in a television interview on Sunday.
But China's premier, who is also due to tour a lithium mine in Perth, is eyeing economic opportunities despite areas of friction.
Upon arriving in Adelaide on Saturday, PM Li said “mutual respect, seeking common ground while setting aside differences and mutually beneficial cooperation” were key to relations between the two countries.
Melissa Conley-Tyler, an honorary research fellow at the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute, said Australia had endured a “long, chilly period where it was not possible to have any formal dialogue with China”.
Li's visit sends a message that “Australia is now seen as a friendly country, not the unfriendly and hostile one we were seen as at the height of tensions”, she told AFP.
