Chinese Premier Li Qiang scheduled his visit to Australia and New Zealand in the recent and upcoming weeks. He arrived in New Zealand on Thursday for an official visit on the 13th of June where he will start his three-nation tour from June 13 to 20. For more than 50 years, New Zealand and China have established a strategic diplomatic relations which benefitted both of these countries upliftment. The third nation will be Malaysia.
On the counterpart, the tour to Australia has a huge significance on both the countries diplomatic relations. Since 2017, for the first time, a Chinese premier will travel to Australia to strengthen the trade ties. This four-day trip begins on Tuesday when Beijing will come after imposing trade barriers several years ago on Australia. Scholars believe the meeting will unfold several deepened issues and clear the communications.
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Chinese Premier’s Visit to New Zealand
On Thursday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang stressed that China and New Zealand should always remain for mutual development and upliftment. “These countries have common economic ties, development, and cultural values and international propositions.”-Li said at the government house of Wellington during his meeting with the governor-general of New Zealand, Cindy Kiro.
The Chinese premier said that since the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and New Zealand 52 years ago, the friendship between both countries has been enduring and bilateral relations have achieved substantial development.
This trip is the highest number of Chinese visits to New Zealand in seven years. They have signed treaties on trade, climate change, and human rights. Premier Li pledged greater trade cooperation, saying differences between the two nations “should not become a chasm”.
“Naturally, we don’t always see eye-to-eye with each other on everything,” Li told reporters after a bilateral meeting with New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. “But such differences should not become a chasm that blocks exchanges and cooperation between us.”
China is the South Pacific nation’s largest trading partner, with two-way trade worth 36 billion New Zealand dollars ($22 billion). They signed a bilateral free trade agreement in 2008 — China’s first with an Organization for Cooperation and Development nation — and Li’s visit marked the 10th anniversary of a pledge to bolster ties signed in 2014 when China’s President Xi Jinping last visited Wellington.
New Zealand has long sought to diversify its export market from dependence on China. Still, Luxon on Thursday hailed Li’s visit as a renewed opportunity for business, adding there were “huge” opportunities for more trade, citing China’s “rapidly rising middle class.
“China is ready to join hands with New Zealand to upgrade the China-New Zealand comprehensive strategic partnership and bring more benefits to the people of the two countries and the world at large,” Li added.
Echoing Li, Kiro said that New Zealand is willing to continue to deepen cooperation in various fields with China, strengthen people-to-people exchanges, further enhance the friendship between the two peoples, and jointly cope with global issues such as climate change.
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Diplomacy with Australia
Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said the visit represents ‘another important step in stabilizing our relationship with China’. A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, Lin Jian, said the visit aims to build a more ‘fruitful’ China-Australia partnership. The visit comes after years of trade disputes in which Beijing slapped sanctions on $20bn worth of Australian products at the height of a diplomatic feud in 2020.
But relations have warmed since Albanese’s center-left government took power in 2022, adopting a less strident diplomatic tone than its conservative predecessor. Albanese was given a gala welcome to Beijing in November last year, with a smiling President Xi Jinping promising Australia and China could become “trusted partners”.
Premier Li will be welcomed with a state lunch and talks with Albanese in Canberra, the prime minister said, with visits to Adelaide and Perth and meetings with business leaders also on the program.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s visit to Australia this week speaks to continuing efforts by both Beijing and Canberra to maintain a working relationship. But while political tensions have thawed since the trough in relations between 2016 and early 2022, Australian public opinion on China remains generally negative.
Seventy-one percent of Australians say that China is a security threat to Australia. This is not surprising: Australia’s recent experience with China’s campaign of economic coercion and “wolf warrior” diplomacy can hardly be expected to be forgotten, even as Beijing’s punitive tariffs on Australian exports are gradually released and dialogue has resumed at the leadership level.
i. Panda Diplomacy
Premier’s visit to Australia is boiling the discussion in the international diplomatic strategy followed by China, Panda Diplomacy. Panda Diplomacy is a very unique form of diplomacy brain-stormed by China. They tend to supply or loan giant pandas to countries with strengthening ties intention. Following that, the replacement of those Pandas to show displeasure.
The Australian Prime Minister’s announcement of the Chinese Premier’s visit is sparking hopes for Adelaide to get a new pair of Panda, signifying the ‘go-ahead’ in diplomatic relations. Hopes are there that the new pair will replace the existing duo Wang Wang and Funi.
Wang Wang and Fu Ni arrived at Adelaide Zoo in 2009, and the decade-long contract has been extended to the end of this year. But, year after year, the notoriously sex-shy creatures have failed to conceive. But that isn’t their only job – they are also part of international panda diplomacy and a public relations exercise for wildlife conservation.
