Australia's ties with China are mending. But they will never be fully repaired.
The turbulent relationship has calmed ahead of Anthony Albanese's highly symbolic visit to Beijing, but there are limits to that stabilisation.
Xi Jinping’s visit to Tasmania, back in 2014, produced a rare and candid moment of levity from the usually inscrutable Chinese leader.
Upon arrival, he was presented with Bobbie the Bear, a fluffy, fragrant lavender stuffed toy that, at the time, had become a bona fide viral Chinese internet sensation thanks to opportune celebrity endorsements. Xi had been briefed beforehand about the locally-made gift, but it nonetheless elicited a flash of a smile, and maybe a look of bemusement, as his beaming wife Peng Liyuan looked on by his side.
Those were headier times in the Australia-China relationship. On a state visit to Australia, Xi had just been in Canberra to ink a breakthrough free trade agreement and was afforded the honour of addressing federal parliament. His jaunt to Tasmania meant the Chinese leader had visited all Australian states and territories (including previous trips as vice-president). China’s economy was still firing on all cylinders, and hungry for all the iron ore Australia could dig and ship, and the two countries elevated diplomatic ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership.
By this point, less than halfway into his first five-year term as president, much of the early and misjudged Western optimism that Xi could prove a liberal reformist figure for China had already receded. Yet such were the giddy heights that then Prime Minister Tony Abbott was moved to believe — to some global ridicule — that Xi would choose a brief address during a Canberra state banquet to declare Beijing would eventually democratise, appearing not to realise the president’s boilerplate mention referred to a Communist Party-style system where parliamentary delegates endorsed him by 2952 votes to one (three abstained) to lead the nation.
