Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he plans to ask Chinese President Xi Jinping to lift trade restrictions on billions of dollars worth of exports if the two leaders meet for the first time this month. Speaking before leaving for the East Asia Summit in Cambodia on Friday, Albanese said he would ask Xi to lift “counterproductive” tariffs and other trade measures if the two men meet during a series of high-level summits profiles, including G20 leaders. summit in Bali, which begins on Tuesday. “It is not in the interests of Australia, the wine industry, the meat industry and other industries where sanctions have been imposed. But it’s also not in China’s interest,” Albanese, whose centre-left Labor Party came to power in May, said during an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Albanese, who replaced conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison, said the meeting with Xi was not yet “locked in” but hoped to develop a relationship with China based on cooperation and national interest, after years of troubled relations. between the sides. Albanese’s comments come amid expectations that the Australian leader could meet Xi in the coming days, during the G20 summit or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok. Xi is not expected to attend the East Asia Summit in Cambodia, where the Albanian will meet with regional leaders before traveling to Indonesia and Thailand next week. “With Xi consolidating power, the diplomacy that has the greatest potential for success is direct requests from foreign leaders to Xi,” James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, told Al Jazeera. . “Trade sanctions and detained Australians will be at the top of Albanese’s list of key issues. I expect he will engage with them with messages that Australia’s policy on Taiwan remains the same and we do not support economic containment of China either.” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Australian counterpart, Penny Wong, earlier this week that their countries’ relations had recently seen “positive changes”, while calling on each side to address the other’s “legitimate concerns”, according to the ministry Foreign of China. China’s ambassador to Australia said in September that the two leaders could potentially meet without conditions after Labor’s election victory opened the door to a “potential resumption of the relationship”. No Australian leader has met Xi since 2019, when Morrison spoke with the Chinese leader on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. While China is Australia’s largest trading partner, relations between the countries have soured in recent years amid a series of disputes related to the COVID-19 pandemic, national security and human rights. Beijing has curbed billions of dollars of Australian exports, including beef, timber, sugar, lobster and wine, since 2020, when Morrison called for an independent international inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.
