Australia to ask China to lift trade barriers

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he will ask Chinese President Xi Jinping to lift trade barriers. Albanese and Xi are due to attend the G20 Summit in Indonesia next week and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Summit in Thailand. Speaking before leaving the East Asia Summit in Cambodia, Australian Prime Minister Albanese said, “We will both be attending the same two conferences in the next nine days. I would welcome a meeting that can take place during that time.” Noting that he would ask China to lift billions of dollars in trade barriers, Albanese said that lifting China’s economic sanctions was a priority for normalizing relations between the two countries. Australia-China relations China-Australia relations had become tense following the Canberra administration’s attempt to investigate the origins of the virus in the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak. The Beijing administration had escalated political tensions to a trade dimension with the restrictions it imposed on products imported from Australia. The restrictions have cost Australian exporters A$20 billion a year. Australia’s AUKUS agreement with the US and UK last year, which sees cooperation in nuclear submarine technology, has been interpreted by China as an alliance against it in the Pacific. Australia-China trade volume was around $190 billion in 2021.