MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will meet with China’s leader Xi Jinping on an upcoming trip he said Friday would focus on closer business ties.
Albanese departs Saturday for the trip that includes stops in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, and meetings with Xi, Premier Li Qiang and Chairman Zhao Leji of the National People’s Congress. Details on those meetings weren’t disclosed.
Albanese plans to meet business, tourism and sport representatives in Shanghai and Chengdu, his office said. He will lead a business delegation and will attend a CEO roundtable scheduled for Tuesday in Beijing.
“Certainly in areas such as green energy for example, there is a real prospect of further engagement,” Albanese told reporters in Sydney.
“We cooperate where we can and we disagree where we must and we’re able to have those honest conversations about some of the disagreements that are there,” he added.
It will be Albanese’s second visit to China since his center-left Labor Party government was first elected in 2022. It was reelected with an increased majority in May.
Albanese has managed to persuade Beijing to remove a series of official and unofficial trade barriers introduced under the previous conservative government that cost Australian exporters more than 20 billion Australian dollars ($13 billion) a year.
Beijing severed communications with the previous administration over issues including Australian calls for an independent inquiry into the origins of and responses to COVID-19. But Albanese wants to reduce Australia’s economic dependence on China, a free trade partner.
“My government has worked very hard to diversify trade … and to increase our relationships with other countries in the region, including India and Indonesia and the ASEAN countries,” Albanese said, referring to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
“But the relationship with China is an important one, as is our relationships when it comes to exports with the north Asian economies of South Korea and Japan,” he added.
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