Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi must have really enjoyed himself in Australia last week, and not just because he was escaping China's bitter winter for the warmth of a Canberra summer. Mr Yang has got the recently elected government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to withdraw from a US- and Japanese-led four-nation security dialogue, reiterate Australia's opposition to an independent Taiwan and ensure that proposed Chinese government investments in Australia are treated the same way as any private foreign investment.
No wonder, as one newspaper in Australia reported last week, that the Japanese feel a little nervous about the direction Mr Rudd and his government are heading at present.
Mr Yang was in Australia for the first of what is proposed to be an annual ministerial dialogue between the foreign ministers of both countries. Given that Stephen Smith, who holds that portfolio for Australia, was so accommodating of Mr Yang, it is clear that Australia intends to ratchet up even further the already close relationship with China.
If that means Australia's traditional friend - Japan - has its nose put out of joint, then so be it. For Mr Yang, hearing from Mr Smith that, on a recent visit to Japan, he had told his counterparts there that Australia would not attend any more of the Japan, US and India security talks, was manna from heaven.
When officials from Australia, the US, Japan and India met on the sidelines of the Asean regional forum in Manila last May, Beijing was so incensed by what it viewed as the beginnings of a China containment strategy that it sent off a diplomatic 'please explain' note to each of those countries.
Australia, it appears, has got the message. Mr Smith told the Japanese last month that 'Australia would not be proposing a dialogue of that nature'.
Japan is not the flavour of the month in Australia at the moment, given widespread community opposition to Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. So, Mr Smith will have done himself no domestic political harm by siding so publicly with China against the Japanese-led security talks.