Beneath the slick political spin and rosy forecasts about the proposed Australia-China free-trade agreement (FTA) lurks a more complex, less optimistic reality.
Negotiating the deal - which official forecasts say is worth some A$24.4 billion ($146 billion) to Australia and A$86.9 billion to China - is no easy matter, and the frustration is beginning to show.
Negotiations for the agreement began almost a year ago, but according to Mark Vaile, Australia's deputy prime minister and minister for trade, the Chinese are not pulling their weight.
In an interview with the Australian Financial Review last week, Mr Vaile said that whenever he met Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai or the chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, Ma Kai , he complained that their negotiators were not 'participating in the spirit' in which the talks were launched last July.
At the heart of Mr Vaile's concerns is that the Chinese are refusing to commit to talks about the agreement covering all products and all sectors. According to the Australian Financial Review, the Chinese are looking to exclude beef and wheat - two of Australia's major industries - from the agreement, although the Howard government denies that this is the case.
This rather downbeat assessment of the FTA talks is not the first to appear in the Australian media. The Australian Apec study centre at Melbourne's Monash University recently described just how much distance there was still to go along what it calls the 'winding road' of progress towards an agreement.
A recent newsletter from the study centre observed that 'progress in negotiations is being made on goods but the same can't be said for services'.