TALKS are underway to finalize Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese‘s planned visit to China amid efforts to ease years of tensions with Canberra’s largest trading partner.
Albanese previously announced he had accepted an invitation to visit the Chinese capital during his trip to Japan for the G7 Summit last month.
The federal opposition urged the government to ensure China will lift worth $20 billion in trade sanctions on half a dozen industries before the prime minister travels to Beijing.
The Australian Minister reiterated a call for the release of Australian Journalist Cheng Lei currently detained in Beijing since being arrested in September 2020.
Chinese-Australian writer and blogger Yang Hengjun has also been detained in China for over two years since his arrest in 2019 after being accused of espionage which he denied.
Albanese however did not confirm whether the two Australians detained in China would be released prior to his visit to Beijing.
China and Australia signed a Free Trade Agreement in 2015 but relations between the two major trading partners deteriorated since Canberra supported a call for an international inquiry into Beijing’s handling of the Coronavirus along with other geopolitical issues, resulting in a multi-billion trade war that lasted for years.
Meanwhile, Albanese became the first Australian Prime Minister to formally meet with China’s President Xi Jinping in six years, when the pair held a ‘successful’ bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia in November of last year.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles last month said Albanese’s upcoming visit to China has no specific timeframe or conditions and that Canberra would continue engaging with Beijing.
