EDITORIAL: Anthony Albanese should be clear-eyed on China threat

Australia’s relationship with China is fundamental to its continuing economic success.

As Anthony Albanese has pointed out, a quarter of Australian jobs depend on exports, and China is by far our largest trading partner.

Maintaining strong ties is essential and the Prime Minister deserves credit for re-stabilising the relationship after the years-long diplomatic freeze.

But it’s impossible to ignore that significant tension exists within the relationship, though the Prime Minister was trying his best to do just that in Beijing on Tuesday.

Addressing media after meeting President Xi Jinping — the pair’s fourth leaders’ meeting — Mr Albanese was reluctant to give much away.

It goes with the territory — on China’s turf, you have to play by their rules.

That means tiptoeing around some pretty big elephants, such as China’s menacing behaviour in conducting live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea and circumnavigating our continent with a contingent of spy ships.

These are not the actions of a friend.

But Mr Albanese has been reluctant to call out China oo harshly, a reluctance that continued during his tete-a-tete with Mr Xi.

He said he had brought up the incidents with his counterpart in the meeting he described as “constructive”.

“President Xi Jinping said that China engaged in exercises just as Australia engages in exercises . . . I said what I said at the time: it was within international law, there was no breach of international law by China, but that we were concerned about the notice and the ways that it happened, including the live-fire exercises,” Mr Albanese said.

“We have strategic competition in the region, but we continue to engage in order to support peace and security in the region and stability in the region and that is something we advocate for, something I advocated for today.”

He said his Government was taking a “patient, calibrated and deliberate” approach to China.

Another key issue of concern to Australia — the forced sale of the Darwin Port to return it to Australian hands — was not broached, the PM said. Should it go ahead, that move will tempt economic retribution from the Chinese.

Nor was mounting pressure on Canberra from Washington to join the US in a potential conflict with China over Taiwan on the agenda.

Certainly, the Prime Minister should be clear-eyed to the Chinese threat.

Our defence priorities remain shaped by our alliance with the US, which makes no secret of the fact it regards China as its primary security threat.

And so, Australia is caught in the middle of an awkward tug-of-war: our top security sponsor on one side and our greatest economic partner on the other.

The message in President Xi’s own remarks earlier in the day that “no matter how the international landscape may evolve” Australia and China should continue to pursue a shared path “unswervingly” is clear: we must be prepared to pick a side.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore.