China rolls out sweeteners ahead of likely landmark visit by Australian PM Albanese

SYDNEY – For the past three years, Australia had been anxiously following the fate of Ms Cheng Lei, a prominent Chinese-born Australian journalist detained in China, with little detail about the reasons for her arrest or the prospects of her release.

Mr Albanese is expected to visit as soon as early November, the first trip to China by an Australian leader since 2016. “It is a pretty sweetened lead-up to a prime ministerial visit,” he told The Straits Times. “Beijing wants it to be a successful visit. When Albanese is over there, they don’t want all the questions to be about trade blockages and detentions.”following a rift sparked by Chinese anger over various moves by Australia in the past six years.

The improvement of ties between China and Australia followed the election of Mr Albanese’s Labor party in 2022.Mr Albanese has not shifted Australia’s policies towards China – he has, for instance, embraced plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the United States and Britain. But he has adopted less strident rhetoric towards Beijing than the previous Liberal-National coalition government.

Still, there remain some sticking points. Canberra is pressing for the release of another Chinese-Australian, writer Yang Hengjun, who has been detained for more than four years on espionage charges, and for an end to the remaining sanctions. Prof Laurenceson said China appeared to want to improve ties with Australia as a way to show the world that it can still conduct “successful relations with the West and with a staunch ally of the US”.

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