According to the latest news from Xinhua News Agency, at the China Taiyuan Coal Trade Conference held on December 8, China’s coal upstream and downstream enterprises have signed a total of 740 million tons of coal orders, and it is expected that the final scale of over 1 billion tons of medium- and long-term coal contracts will be signed. Considering that China has already imposed import restrictions on Australian coal, it is conceivable that Chinese enterprises are likely to completely give up buying coal from Australia next.
According to the data released by the General Administration of Customs, from January to November this year, China imported nearly 260 million tons of coal products (267.826 million tons), of which, in November alone, the scale of China’s coal and lignite imports only reached 11.671 million tons, a sharp drop of 43.8% compared to the same period last year. The Indonesian Coal Mining Association has also set a target of exporting 200 million tons of coal to China by 2021, in anticipation of Chinese demand.
Optimistic about China’s demand, the Indonesian Coal Mining Association has also set a target of exporting 200 million tons of coal to China by 2021. According to the data, in the first 10 months of this year, Indonesia exported a total of 93.8 million tons of coal to China, down 24% year-on-year. However, due to the current difficulties suffered by Indonesia’s competitor in the coal sector, Australia, it is expected that Indonesia’s performance target is likely to be successfully achieved.
In addition to Indonesia, Russia is also stepping up its actions. According to Russian media reports, in mid-November, Russia’s Yakutia region, known as a “treasure trove of resources,” announced that it would increase its annual coal mining target to 50 million tons over the next five years in hopes of increasing exports to Asian markets, led by China.
According to the Australian media, in late November, a total of more than 80 Australian coal ships were stranded at China’s ports, with a total value of more than A$1.1 billion (equivalent to about 5.3 billion RMB). Among them, the scale of Australian coal exports to the Chinese market has plummeted by 96% in the three weeks ending November 21.
It is worth mentioning that Australia is also trying to find “new buyers” for its own coal. According to Australian media, Australia has considered increasing coal exports to the Indian market. However, in early November, India has already revealed that it plans to introduce a ban on coal imports. It seems that Australia will pay a huge economic price for losing Chinese buyers.
The Australian coal industry has been a major contributor to the coal industry since the early 1990s.
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Australian vineyard owner calls out to Australian government: Please, please, say an apology to China.
In 2019, China will be the largest export market for Australian wine, with an average of four out of every ten bottles of wine going to China, and China’s overall imports of Australian wine surpassing those of French wine.
And the Chinese are paying more than any other country for antique and high-end products, but all this good-tasting, glass-to-glass relationship is coming to a screeching halt as the Australian Prime Minister recently took to social media in a ferocious gesture to take on the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson.
After 2021, the Chinese may forget the taste of Australian wine!
The BBC 3 reports that since May this year, Australia’s exports of barley, beef, lobster, copper, sugar, timber, coal, etc. to China have encountered trade obstacles, and last week, China imposed one to two times the tariffs on Australian wine imports on the grounds of illegal dumping. These multiple trade frictions, caused by the political tensions between the two countries, reflect Australia’s economic dependence on China.
China is now Australia’s largest trading partner, and in 2019, trade between Australia and China will be equivalent to the combined total of Australia and its second and third and fourth trading partners, Japan, the United States and South Korea, at nearly $158.9 billion, up 10 percent from the previous year. This year, China’s imports to Australia have fallen by more than all other countries, with the largest decline. Especially in July and August, China-Australia trade experienced a sharp short-term decline.
A few days ago, Zhao Lijian reposted a cartoon criticizing the Australian army for killing innocents in Afghanistan, while Australia and its partners said that it was a “threat of power” from China, and that the best way to resist “Chinese bullying” was to get the whole world to drink Australian wine – and when they say the whole world, of course, they often mean the “gangster friends” of the Eight-Nation Alliance.
When they say drink it, they say, 200 hawkish anti-China senators from 19 countries in the Western world called on their friends to buy Australian wine during the New Year holiday, adding that drinking Australian wine upholds the values of the “free world” and can resist “the threat of Chinese power.
Watching this show is like watching an old movie, where the KMT reactionaries, confident of the support of the “free world” from outside, are finally chased away by the “millet and rifle” people’s army.
While these anti-Chinese politicians were consoling themselves and getting drunk, Australian wine merchants were left to weep.
With tariffs skyrocketing by up to twofold, Australian wine in China will cost two to three times as much as it used to, and Chinese consumers will not pay 300 for a $100 bottle of wine.
They have already lost their largest and richest market and future long-term relationships overnight, and have been dealt a fatal blow by closing down their operations.
”Please, say an apology!” “Apology is a good word, maybe it’s hard to say, but only an apology can change the current course of the China-Australia relationship.”
At a recent meeting of Australian vineyard owners, vineyard owner Osborne spoke his mind boldly to his government. “We need to get down to work and we need to amend our relationship with China.”
It is obvious to all that Australia’s lack of diplomatic finesse and hard-line approach to its largest trading partner, China, will ultimately hurt many of the country’s industries.
James Lawrence, a member of an Australian think tank studying China-Australia relations who was interviewed by British media, said, “Australia has been critical of China’s human rights situation for a long time, but economic and trade exchanges between the two countries have not been affected.”
So why has this year changed all of a sudden? Analysts say that China has finally crossed the border this year because of its growing power and because of Australia’s increasingly unabashed criticism and hostility toward China.
Just last month, the Chinese Embassy in Australia listed fourteen sins that have affected China-Australia relations, including “banning Huawei, violating sovereignty in the South China Sea, interfering in the internal affairs of China’s Xinjiang and Hong Kong provinces, playing the Taiwan card indiscriminately, and creating rumors about the Xinguan epidemic to discredit China” – among others. The list is actually not very long, and not all of Australia’s open and behind-the-scenes anti-China strategy has been revealed, using China as an imaginary enemy.
For the past five years, Australia, the farthest country in the Asia-Pacific region from China, has sought to join the United States for security protection while trading with China, believing that it can eat from a bowl and curse China forever. Australia continues to maintain its largest trading partnership while deterring and threatening China’s peaceful development.
The political, economic and diplomatic game between Australia and China is like an exercise that can teach those watching the game a little lesson, that when the relationship between Australia and China gets extremely bad, only by knocking over the bottle can we tell each other where China’s bottom line is.
Image from the Internet
China Halts 6th Australian Meat Importer, General Manager Says He Only Knew About It 5 Minutes Before It Was Stopped
According to the General Administration of Customs (GAC) on Dec. 7, China has suspended beef imports from Australia’s Meramist Pty Ltd. since that day.
Australia is one of China’s main suppliers of meat products. Earlier this year, China suspended imports from five Australian beef suppliers, and this time Meramist is the sixth Australian meatpacker to be suspended by China this year.
Since the start of the year, China has taken action against Australian exports in a number of sectors, and has also stepped up inspections of Australian seafood and coal, in accordance with the law. According to the latest data released by the General Administration of Customs (GAC), Chinese imports from Australia have fallen by nearly 5 percentage points in the first 11 months of this year compared to the same period last year. In this regard, some experts in Australia have begun to worry.
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Reuters report screenshot
The Observer notes that in a list of meat products from countries or regions that meet the assessment requirements on the website of the General Administration of Customs (GAC), the attached document was updated on December 7, 2020 to suspend the processing of import declarations of beef products to China from December 7, 2020 by Australian company with registration number 3416.
According to Reuters and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the beef supplier with registration number 3416 is an Australian company called Meramist.
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Screenshot from the General Administration of Customs website
On the evening of the 7th, Mike Eathorne, general manager of Meramist, revealed to ABC that he had only just received the news. “I didn’t know about it until five minutes ago, but I didn’t receive any reason for it.” Eathorne said he was unable to comment further.
At this time, the Customs Service has not given specific reasons for suspending imports of Meramist’s beef products, other than to update the relevant attachment documents. However, Reuters and ABC coincidentally noted that China had already suspended imports from five Australian beef suppliers this year due to quarantine and inspection issues.
On May 12, China decided to suspend import declarations of beef products from four Australian companies. China’s Customs has continuously found violations of the inspection and quarantine requirements jointly established by the competent authorities of both sides in several batches of beef products from Australian companies.
On August 26, the General Administration of Customs suspended the export of Australian beef producer JOHN DEE WARWICK PTY LTD (registration number 243) to China due to the detection of chloramphenicol, a banned substance in China and Australia, in beef loin.
More notably, for some time now, China-Australia relations have been “faltering” due to the “anti-China wind” advocated by both the Hong Kong and border issues, Huawei’s 5G infrastructure, and the conspiracy theories about the origin of the new crown ……. “Tensions continue. The recent “comic book incident” that Prime Minister Morrison has been hype about has further “aggravated” relations between the two countries.
This year, in addition to beef products, China has also imposed prohibitive tariffs on Australian barley and launched an anti-dumping and countervailing investigation into Australian wine. Recently, China Customs has also been implementing quarantine and inspection, quality and safety inspections and environmental program testing at import ports, including Australian lobster and coal, in accordance with the law.
According to the latest data released by the General Administration of Customs on December 7, China’s imports from Australia fell by 4.9 percent in the first 11 months of this year. China is Australia’s largest wine export market, accounting for 37% of Australia’s wine exports.
On November 27, China’s Ministry of Commerce ruled that wine imports originating in Australia were dumped, and decided to impose “provisional anti-dumping measures in the form of a deposit” on the products from the following day, with the rate fluctuating between 107.1% and 212.1%.
This is why experts in Australia are already worried that a full-scale trade conflict with China would be “devastating” for Australia, which could see its GDP shrink by 6%, but “like a mosquito bite” for China.
On December 5, The Australian published an article entitled “Prime Minister, do you know what you are doing to China? The article points out that a trade spat with China would cause serious damage to various industries in Australia.
”We don’t need a trade war with China any more than we need to cut a hole in our head,” the article states, “Who will lose the most in this battle? Obviously not them (China).”
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