Not content with simply purchasing commodities from Australia, China and its corporates are becoming involved as never before in the Australian mining sector as investors as well as customers.
The two countries have never been closer and at the heart of the relationship is China's hunger for commodities to fuel its growth and development.
For Australia, the China-driven commodities boom is not only shoring up economic growth and driving up profits at corporates such as Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton but it is responsible for micro-economic impacts such as a property boom in the western city of Perth and a chronic national shortage of mining engineers.
For Chinese miners, Australia is a new frontier and many have followed the closer diplomatic ties - as evidenced by ongoing discussions on a free-trade agreement - with strategic investments in iron ore, aluminium, gas and approaches in the uranium sector.
'The Chinese are largely emulating the Japanese strategy in the 1980s which was to invest in the nation which contains the commodities they need the most,' says a Perth-based mining industry veteran.
'If you look at iron ore, prices went up more than 70 per cent last year and have just gone up 19 per cent again, so it makes complete sense for the Chinese to not only be customers but also have some ownership of these resources as well.'