From the day Abbott came to power Murdoch and Abbott played China with a two-faced and double hand. Abbott took credit for the ALP’s economic gains which he could ill afford to let slip by. While Murdoch bad-mouthed China with a well-intended Culture war for his own personal revenge for having been kicked out. What was once a solid relationship between two, we saw wither for politics, and an individual’s personal hate which exacerbated and amplified after 2016 when Trump entered the scene.
During the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told journalists on Nov. 15 his country “seeks a stable relationship with China.”
This is because, as Albanese pointed out, China is “Australia’s largest trading partner … worth more than Japan, the United States, and the Republic of Korea… combined.” Since 2009, China has been Australia’s largest destination for exports as well as the largest single source of Australia’s imports.
For the past six years, China has largely ignored Australia’s requests for meetings due to the latter’s close military alignment with the U.S. But in Bali, China’s President Xi Jinping made it clear that the Chinese-Australian relationship is one to be “cherished.”
olddogthoughts 