Chinese Premier's trip to Australia to push forward mutual political trust

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pays the official visit to Australia at the invitation of the country's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrives in Australia Wednesday night. [Photo: China Plus]

This is his first visit to the country in his capacity as Chinese premier.

As CRI's Huang Shan reports, experts from the both countries believe, the premier's visit will play a pivotal role in enhancing political mutual trust.

Chinese premier Li Keqiang's visit to Australia is expected to boost the development of China-Australia relations and cooperation, and push forward free trade and regional integration.

But, how to boost mutual political trust between the two countries is an issue capturing the world's attention.

Han Feng, a professor at the National Institute of International Strategies, says China and Australia need to hold talks on dealing with problems on a strategic level, since the both sides are both undergoing a period of adjustment.

"The resistance to Turnbull's policies in revitalizing the economy and boosting national development is considerably high. He also made it clear that domestic industry needs to be upgraded, diversified, along with the launch of an innovative economy. This has many aspects in common with China's reform trajectory, especially in the implementation of the Belt and Road initiative. So the two sides may have a lot of structural cooperation opportunities."

He added, differing values displayed by the two countries have lead to some diverging stances on regional issues.

"Although Australia is geographically located in the South Pacific, it thinks of itself as belonging to the system of developed countries, in terms of the economic form and values. So Australia agrees with the Western system of governing the world and the region. For the development of East Asia, China believes that East Asia should go its own way, which is in line with ASEAN. But with deepening cooperation between China and Australia at a regional level, the two countries will gradually form a regional consensus."

James Laurenceson is the deputy director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology, Sydney.

He said the lack of mutual political trust between the two sides is plainly due to the different political systems.

And he believed China and Australia can do more to enhance trust by concentrating on those areas where cooperation are possible.

"I'd like to see the both sides continue to emphasize diplomacy in areas like South China Sea. I know there's a tendency in China to think that Australia wants to get behind the US on the issue. The Americans has been disappointed in what we've done. For example, what the Americans have been doing is running the circles of freedom of navigation control. We haven't joined them in doing that. The primacy in these areas, I also think we've been in an area of combinality between China and Australia."

He further pointed out, with the signing of the Free Trade Agreements, bilateral cooperation in this field has reached solid achievements, and can be further deepened.

"Sometimes people think in this age of Trump era, the world is turning against free trade and globalization. That's the only truth in North America and certain parts of Western Europe. Australia is very positive that free trade with China is an opportunity for both China and Australia to lead on that issue. And more of those people to people exchanges have been fed into trade. We have a wonderful migrant Chinese community and they're driving a lot of trade with China."

This year marks the 45th anniversary of China and Australia establishing diplomatic ties.

For CRI, this is Huang Shan.