China not targeting Australia’s Pacific Island ties, says senior Communist Party official

In speech in Sydney, Liu Jianchao says the two countries could work together on regional development
Liu rejects suggestions that a Chinese warship acted unprofessionally in an encounter with an Australian frigate earlier this month

China-Australia relations

Kandy Wong

Published: 9:00pm, 28 Nov 2023

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China does not aim to challenge Australia’s influence among the Pacific Islands, a senior Chinese official in charge of Communist Party diplomacy said in Sydney on Tuesday, amid renewed efforts to improve relations between the two countries.

“China has no intention of seeking any sphere of influence. We respect the role and the influence of Australia in the Pacific island countries,” Liu Jianchao said in a speech to the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.

Liu, head of the Central Committee’s International Department, said Australia and China could consult each other on regional affairs.

“We could work together for the economic development in these countries,” he said.

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Liu is the first top-level Chinese official to visit Australia since the Covid-19 pandemic and his three-day trip comes less than a month after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese became the first Australian leader to go to China in seven years.

The trips are part of efforts to put relations back on a normalised track following the decline induced by the previous Australian administration’s demands in 2020 to investigate the origin of Covid-19.

The two countries have described their relations as a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, a definition that Liu said China wanted to “stick to”.

But Beijing was not “that ambitious” to define the relationship as stabilised, he said.

“You know, after suffering so many years of setback in our bilateral relationship, we need to restore the relationship to its desired state [in] a gradual manner,” Liu said, adding that “enhancing mutual trust” would keep the two countries on course.

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But relations hit some turbulence soon after Albanese’s trip with Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles accusing a Chinese warship of making an “unsafe and unprofessional” interaction with an Australian navy vessel that injured a number of Australian military divers.

Marles said HMAS Toowoomba was on a diving operation in Japan’s exclusive economic zone on November 14 to clear fishing nets from its propellers when a Chinese destroyer approached “at a closer range”.

“Soon after, it was detected operating its hull-mounted sonar in a manner that posed a risk to the safety of the Australian divers who were forced to exit the water,” he said.

Liu dismissed suggestions that the Chinese ship was unprofessional and said the Australian vessel appeared to be a statement about China’s policies in the South China Sea.

“My question would be why the Australian naval ship should be allowed into that area,” he said.

“The reason why the Australian naval ships were there was really to contain China – so that is the message that we have been getting.

“China did it in a very professional way. We did nothing that harms … the sailors, the naval people on that ship. So I think that this is the kind of thing that needs to be discussed at a certain level.”

Calling it “small incident”, Liu said such encounters could really escalate if not properly managed.