The Australian leader flies off on Saturday to a very changed country than the one Malcolm Turnbull encountered on the last prime ministerial visit in 2016.
It is no coincidence that Anthony Albanese’s gala lunch with the Australian business community in China will be held close to Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport on Sunday.
The lunch will take place on the eve of the opening of Xi’s giant import-export trade fair, where 300 Australian exporters will be flogging their wares to the world’s biggest consumer market. However, when Albanese steps into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Monday, he will be dealing with a very different superpower than the one Turnbull faced in 2016.
Even so, Xi’s grip on power remains unshakeable, and he is not about to shelve ambitions for Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland. Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Xi Jinping in Indonesia this year was the first between leaders of Australia and China since 2017.China’s economic growth engine is spluttering, a key reason for Xi to keep Australia – with its crucial iron ore reserves – on side, but it is repairable.
Albanese is not a head of state, so his tour is known as an official visit with Premier Li Qiang as the formal host and lunch partner on Tuesday. He will still meet Xi, though, as part of a welcoming ceremony in Beijing which will not be devoid of pomp and ceremony.
China upped its diplomatic spending by 12.2 per cent this year, and leaders and senior officials from Singapore, Malaysia, Spain and Japan have visited over the past few weeks, Reuters says.
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