China-Australia relations: termination of free trade deal ahead of review unlikely despite tensions, experts say

Name: Australia ditched diplomacy for ‘adversarial approach’ to China and ‘a pat on the head’ from US
Uploaded: 2020-11-24T20:30:11.000Z
Duration: 7 min 55 s
Description: Australia ditched diplomacy for ‘adversarial approach’ to China and ‘a pat on the head’ from US

The China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAfta) is up for a five-year review next month, having been signed in December 2015

Tensions have increased over the last seven months, although on Monday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said this had been caused by some degree of misunderstanding

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Then China Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng and then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott formalised the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAfta) in June 2015. Photo: Getty Images

Su-Lin Tan

Published: 4:30am, 25 Nov 2020Updated: 12:08pm, 26 Nov 2020

Bilateral tensions between China and Australia are unlikely to jeopardise the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAfta) when it is up for its five-year review next month, trade experts say.

While the five-year anniversary of the historic treaty between the two countries has come in the middle of an unabating political conflict, international trade lawyers insist such reviews are designed to open up more trade and expand the treaty, and even if that does not happen, at the minimum, the trade deal will remain the same.

Despite the exchange of political blows that have ratcheted up over the past seven months, experts are hopeful of a reconciliation and still see interest from both countries to maintain a free-trade relationship with last month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting offering an indication.

“President Xi [Jinping] explicitly declared that China will favourably consider joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Australia is an important CPTPP member. This shows China is still interested in connecting with Australia,” University of Sydney ChAFTA expert Jeanne Huang said.

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Australia ditched diplomacy for ‘adversarial approach’ to China and ‘a pat on the head’ from US

CPTPP is an 11-nation free trade deal between Australia, Brunei, Canada Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, and even before Xi’s comments last week, a series of high profile officials in Beijing had already voiced openness about China joining the trans-Pacific trade pact abandoned by Donald Trump in the early days of his presidency.