Anthony Albanese meets Xi Jinping as business leaders push for deeper China trade ties

Australian business leaders are looking to the Prime Minister to set the tone for deeper trade ties with China when he sits down with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang in Beijing today.

Anthony Albanese’s high-profile meetings with the three most powerful Chinese political leaders, Mr Xi, Mr Li and Communist Party Chairman Zhao Leji, at the prestigious Great Hall of the People are the centrepiece of his six-day tour of China.

The Prime Minister’s schedule so far has been dominated by events promoting the economic relationship and greater cooperation on tourism and sport, but he has vowed not to shy away from raising points of contention with the Chinese leadership over Beijing’s escalating military build-up and the death sentence hanging over imprisoned Australian writer Yang Hengjun.

His three-city sweep of Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu comes at a time of rising geopolitical uncertainty, with China assertively advancing its territorial claims in the region and the United States stoking economic upheaval through its unpredictable tariff regime.

Mr Albanese’s much-anticipated talks with the Chinese leadership run parallel to the Australian-China CEO roundtable, drawing together business titans from resources, tourism, finance, education and agriculture, which he will address on Tuesday evening.

As the packed schedule kicked off on Tuesday, Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black stressed the importance of engagement between top-level political leaders to “set the tone” at a business-to-business level.

“Those business-to-business engagements in turn … send a bit of a signal to Australian businesses and to Chinese businesses that further engagement is welcome and further engagement should be encouraged,” he said.

Tuesday’s business event will be the first CEO roundtable in Beijing with an Australian Prime Minister in nearly a decade, and the executives attending will present Mr Albanese and Mr Li with a series of recommendations on how to forge closer economic ties.

Businesses in both countries are keen to reset the bilateral economic relationship after a slump during a diplomatic spat between the two nations over the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic that led to China slapping a series of import bans on Australian commodities, including agricultural produce and wine.

More than $20 billion of trade impediments have now been lifted, and last year the exchange of goods and services hit $312 billion.

Mr Black said Tuesday’s forum was an opportunity to explore a number of areas where trade cooperation could be enhanced in areas such as agribusiness, professional services, financial services, higher education and green metals.

“One in four Australian jobs is dependent upon trade,” he said, adding that as global trade lines were being redrawn, greater cooperation between Australia and China would help to “safeguard against some of the uncertainty we see in the world right now.”

“When you’re dealing with uncertainty, such as there is … we can really just control those things that are within our scope to control,” he said.

Although Australia was a small country, it could ensure the right type of settings were in place to bring in investment and also engage with the world at a bilateral and multilateral level to underscore the importance of free trade, Mr Black argued.

He said there was an “enormous amount of interest” in China to invest and partner more with Australia, but that Chinese business leaders were asking for an improved investment environment, consistently raising concerns about red tape and environmental planning rules.

Australia has indicated it will not be easing investment rules, but Mr Albanese on Tuesday will seek to reassure the business community that his Government is committed to a thriving business environment.

“Stabilising Australia’s relationship with China has been a focus of the Albanese Labor Government. We are already seeing the benefits, without compromising any of Australia’s interests,” he will say.