The Australian government – although it has signed on to the “development” of the bilateral relationship – appears rusted on to “stabilisation”. What lies beyond it is seemingly a no-man’s land where Australian foreign policy feet fear to tread.
The government’s line is that “stabilisation”, as well as providing a framework for cautious engagement, also houses within it a diplomatic bunker, fire-proofed to withstand jolts to the relationship.
So, the incident late last year in the East China Sea, where a Chinese warship pulsed its underwater sonar at Australian navy divers, and the suspended death penalty handed down to Australian citizen Yang Hengjun, have not disturbed “stabilisation”.
But “stabilisation” risks becoming an empty shibboleth that substitutes for serious foreign policy thinking. Can it be the endpoint for the relationship in a world of rapidly unfolding change? The country’s diplomatic agility is in question at the very moment nimbleness is required.
In the end, it will probably be the framework of commitments and agreements at the working level of the relationship that will have to nudge the relationship beyond this stagnant phase.
Last November, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and President Xi committed to a raft of dialogues and consultations on climate change, the energy transition, and other policy challenges, including on trade. These are all going ahead.
Wang is primarily here to prepare for the visit, likely later this year, of Chinese premier Li Qiang. That would return the Australia-China relationship to the annual rotation of senior-level visits.
Is that the point the two countries return to a normal relationship which, like any bilateral tie, allows for the management of differences and tensions? Or will it be when senior visitors from China visit Australia first, before New Zealand, as had previously been the case?
This will be Penny Wong’s fourth meeting with Wang Yi, dubbed by Chinese state media as the “silver fox” due to his salt-and-pepper hair.
Former Australian ambassador to China Geoff Raby met Wang Yi on numerous occasions when Wang served as minister for cross strait relations under former Chinese president Hu Jintao. Raby tells the Financial Review that Wang is “a consummate diplomat: cautious, considered and charming if he chooses”.
“On one occasion, when I was departing, Wang asked why did I call on him more often than any other ambassador other than the Japanese?” Raby recalls. “This gave me an opportunity to explain how much Australia’s security and prosperity depended on stability in North Asia.”
But as former foreign minister Julie Bishop knows only too well, Wang can also exhibit a brusque and uncompromising nationalism. Other Chinese diplomats were subsequently to take their cues from this, and other occasions, thus birthing the counter-productive “wolf warrior” diplomacy that so harmed China’s international reputation.