Australia’s treasurer will visit China this week in the latest sign that bilateral ties are mending

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Treasurer Jim Chalmers will this week become the first Australian government minister in that key economic role to visit China in seven years, in the latest sign that strained bilateral relations are mending.

Chalmers flies to Beijing on Thursday for a two-day visit. The last Australian treasurer to visit China was Scott Morrison in 2017.

Morrison rose to become prime minister a year later and bilateral relations further soured under his rule until his conservative government was replaced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor Party after the 2022 general election.

Chalmers said Wednesday that the main purpose of his visit was to co-chair the Australia-China Strategic Economic Dialogue on Thursday with He Lifeng, chair of China’s National Development and Reform Commission.

Discussions will focus on growing trade and investment with China and opportunities for Australian and Chinese businesses to cooperate, government documents say.

“This is another really important step towards stabilizing our economic relationship with China,” Chalmers told reporters in Brisbane.

“It will be part of the Albanese government‘s methodical and coordinated efforts to reestablish dialogue with China, Australia’s largest trading partner,” Chalmers added.

The dialogue was last held in 2017.

The bilateral relationship plumbed new depths in 2020 after the Morrison government called for an independent investigation into the origins of and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

China imposed a series of official and unofficial bans in 2020 on Australian products, including coal, cotton, wine, barley, beef, lobsters and wood that cost Australian exporters up to 20 billion Australian dollars ($13 billion) a year.

Mo