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Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has met President Xi Jinping in Beijing as he seeks to reaffirm ties with China amid global trade turmoil and pressure from the US over security commitments to Taiwan.
The meeting comes in the middle of a six-day state visit to China, which includes stops in Shanghai and Chengdu, where Albanese is aiming to strengthen economic ties in areas including steel production and tourism.
For China, the objective is to capitalise on uncertainty generated by President Donald Trump’s erratic policies to try to draw Australia closer on issues such as trade — a strategy that mirrors Beijing’s approach with other US allies such as Europe and the UK.
“One of the things that has marked Beijing’s external relationships this year is that they’ve been trying to improve ties,” said Ian Chong, associate professor at the National University of Singapore. “They’ve been doing more outreach than they did previously.”
The meeting on Tuesday was the fourth between Xi and Albanese and the first since the Labor leader was re-elected in a landslide last year on a surge of opposition to Trump. Albanese has not met his US counterpart since he was first elected prime minister in 2022 but said that he expects to do so before the end of the year.
The Australian leader deflected questions before the meeting about whether China would offer itself as an alternative partner if tensions with the US over defence spending continued to intensify.
“I don’t draw alternatives. What I want to see is a stable and secure region. I think that is in the interests of everyone in the Indo-Pacific,” he said in Shanghai on Monday.
One of the biggest accomplishments of Albanese’s first term was a successful effort to repair economic ties with China, easing a two-year stand-off that saw Beijing impose trade blocks on Australian goods including wine, coal, lobsters and barley.
China is Australia’s most important trading partner, accounting for about a third of the latter’s exports, led by iron ore. Two-way trade in goods and services between the countries reached A$312bn (US$204bn) in 2024. China’s ambassador to Australia pre-empted the trip by suggesting closer co-operation between the countries in areas including artificial intelligence and clean energy.
Albanese has been accompanied on the trip by executives from leading miners including Rio Tinto, BHP and Fortescue as well as Macquarie Group and the Australian arm of HSBC, and will hold a business roundtable on Tuesday. He will also meet China’s premier Li Qiang, Beijing’s number two official, who visited Australia last year.
Yet the countries’ commercial relationship has been complicated by a series of security issues.
The Financial Times reported on Saturday that the Pentagon has been pressuring Australia and Japan to clarify what role they would play in the event that China invaded Taiwan, over which Beijing claims sovereignty.
The Trump administration has also reviewed the Aukus security pact, a Biden-era agreement that will enable Canberra to procure nuclear-powered submarines and that is opposed by Beijing, the FT reported last month.
The Trump review of Aukus would be welcomed by China, pointing to tensions in a pillar of the security relationship between the US and Australia, said university professor Chong. “Aukus may end up to be less of a concern for them than originally was the case,” he said.
However, if Albanese was too receptive to China’s outreach, he could risk provoking hawks within the Trump administration.
“It’s not an easy line to toe for Australia, which has its own concerns with [China]. But it has reasons to co-operate as well,” said Chong. “It’s not an easy trip for Albanese.”
Albanese told reporters in Shanghai that Australia did not support “any unilateral action” on Taiwan. “We have a clear position and we have been consistent about that . . . we don’t want any change in the status quo,” he said in response to a question about the FT report.
Euan Graham, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said that the timing of the trip was “potentially embarrassing”, with Albanese “trying to drum up business” in China at the same time that his country was hosting military exercises with the US and UK.
The trip also comes after Chinese naval forces in February conducted live fire exercises off the coast of Australia, forcing flights to be rerouted.
Albanese’s pledge during last year’s election campaign to return the port in Darwin, which was sold to a Chinese company almost a decade ago, to domestic ownership is expected to prove another source of tension.
The Australian leader stood firm on his commitment on the port, which is located near a US military base in the north of the country, saying he was “very clear” about his government’s priorities.
“Australia has a multi-layered relationship, as it must, with China,” Fortescue founder Andrew Forrest told reporters in Shanghai. There is a risk that “security becomes a distraction”, he added.
