The Chinese government announced this Thursday that the Chinese side has indefinitely suspended all activities under the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue mechanism. However, some scholars believe that China’s statement is of no practical significance and will not affect the economic and trade activities of the two countries, given the cessation of exchanges between officials of the two countries.
Relations between China and Australia have further deteriorated. China’s National Development and Reform Commission issued a statement on its official website this Thursday morning: Recently, certain elements of the Australian federal government have launched a series of initiatives to interfere with and disrupt normal exchanges and cooperation between the two countries based on cold war thinking and ideological bias. Based on the current attitude of the Australian Federal Government towards China-Australia cooperation, the NDRC has decided to suspend indefinitely all activities under the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue mechanism co-led with the Australian government with immediate effect. This is the first time that China has formally frozen the diplomatic mechanism since the deterioration of relations between China and Australia.
In response, Feng Chongyi, a professor of China studies at the University of Technology Sydney, said in an interview with the station on the same day that senior Chinese and Australian officials have stopped engaging with each other for nearly two years: “There should have been no contact between officials above the ministerial level for a year or two. Australia has just passed new laws for the federal government to review agreements signed by local governments, universities and large companies with China or foreign business organizations, and has just scrapped the ‘One Belt, One Road’ agreement that the state of Victoria had initialled with the Chinese government.”
Australia’s economic decoupling from China will have little impact on Australia
Feng Chongyi said that, in fact, China’s indefinite suspension of the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue mechanism is of little practical significance: “The real impact will not be too great because China has imposed sanctions on so many goods imported into Australia, but the economics community statistics show that Australia’s exports are not much affected, and goods shipped to the Chinese market find alternative countries even if they are not exported to China, so This sanction is for the performance of war-wolf diplomacy.”
China has angered the Chinese government over the Australian government’s proposal last year to set up an independent investigation team to go to China to investigate Wuhan New Crown pneumonia. Although China has stopped importing foodstuffs such as wine, barley and lobster from Australia as well as raising tariffs, the total amount of Australian exports to China has risen rather than fallen.
According to the latest data, Australia’s total exports to China increased by 12 percent in December last year, even the fourth highest in the history of Australia’s foreign trade surplus.
Suspension of China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue mechanism does not affect trade
Wu Qiang, a former lecturer in the political science department at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said in an interview with the station that China’s suspension of all activities under the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue mechanism indicates a further escalation of the diplomatic war between the two countries. This escalation is of course a prudent step, it is only a suspension of the freeze on exchanges and dialogue with Australia at the policy level, but it does not mean the end of trade relations between the two sides,” he said. In the usual Chinese parlance, the cold face thrown at Australia by China’s diplomatic warfare is a small step in response to the current tensions in China-Australia relations.”
The “China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue” began in June 2014, when Australia’s then Federal Treasurer Hockey and Trade and Investment Minister Robb held their first dialogue with Xu Shaoshi, then director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, during a visit to China; in November, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Australia and met with then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to In November, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Australia and announced jointly with then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott the completion of the China-Australia FTA negotiations. The agreement came into force the following year.
Financial Scholar Commander believes that the current Sino-Australian relationship is at a new historic low and that China’s suspension of the Strategic Economic Dialogue mechanism with Australia is still aimed at putting pressure on the other side: “China is very clear that it hopes that Australia will somehow deter Canberra’s propaganda on the China threat theory when the G7 meets in the West and not join the G7 in in condemning China.”
As the diplomatic war between Beijing and Canberra escalates, the Australian federal government recently revoked the Belt and Road agreement between China and the country’s state of Victoria. Peter Dutton, who has just become federal defense minister, also recently made it clear that he is carefully considering China’s Lanqiao Group’s 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin.
The Australian government had not yet made a public response to the NDRC’s statement by the time we went to press.
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