The Xi-20
Australia used to be bolshie when dealing with China, while the British held their tongue. But Anthony Albanese and Sir Keir Starmer’s meetings with Xi Jinping show that dynamic has flipped.
Today I’m filing from the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where Anthony Albanese has over recent hours met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Turkish President Recep Erdoğan and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Albanese started the day in Rio with his third official bilateral meeting with Xi, who said “great care” needed to be taken to maintain the relationship, and called for Australia to “provide a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies”.
The prime minister said he raised the plight of detained Australian writer Yang Hengjun in his closed section of his opening remarks to Xi but didn’t press him for any kind of update on his situation. In the section open to the media, Albanese was accentuating the positive, vowing to continue to work with China "in areas of shared interest, including on our energy transition and climate change".
Compare that to the British prime minister’s meeting with Xi in the same room immediately prior. In the open part of that meeting, Starmer raised concerns about China’s sanctions on British MPs, the deterioration of British citizen and Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai, Taiwan and the South China Sea.
