He held separate talks with Premier Li Qiang, and they co-chaired a CEO round table attended by nearly 30 Chinese and Australian business executives. At the banquet hosted by Li that evening, a band played iconic Australian anthems including “a different version of Paul Kelly’s ‘To Her Door’, of Midnight Oil’s ‘Power and the Passion’”, Albanese later told reporters.
“Australia’s predicament is not unusual in the region,” said James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.
“I think there remains utility in Canberra’s approach. The economic equities in relations with China and security equities in relations with the US are so large that making a binary choice is simply not realistic.”
