Kirsty Needham and Renju Jose
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Chinese Premier Li Qiang will meet business leaders in Western Australia on Tuesday and visit a lithium processing plant in the resource-rich state on the final day of a four-day visit to Australia.
Li Keqiang, China’s highest-ranking government official after President Xi Jinping, will attend a business roundtable in Perth with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to Australia is the first by a Chinese premier in seven years and marks a stabilization of ties between the U.S. security ally and the world’s second-largest economy.
Li is due to visit the lithium hydroxide processing plant of Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia, which is 51% owned by Shenzhen- and Hong Kong-listed Tianqi Lithium and 49% by Australian mining company IGO.
Western Australia supplies more than half of the world’s seaborne iron ore, with China one of its biggest customers, and it also supplies half of the world’s lithium.
Li’s visit raises the question of whether Australia will continue to accept significant Chinese investment in its critical minerals sector, as Western security allies urge it to reduce reliance on China for rare earth elements essential for electric vehicles. Last month, Australia blocked several Chinese investors from taking larger stakes in rare earth mining companies, citing national interest.
Premier Li said on Monday that China expected Australia to provide a “fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese enterprises”.
In an opinion piece in The West Australian on Tuesday, Prime Minister Albanese said the government wanted to leverage Australia’s critical minerals and rare earths to create more jobs in processing, refining and manufacturing, and to sell to wider markets.
“This commitment to revitalising local manufacturing doesn’t mean severing trade links or raising the economic drawbridge, but rather moving Australia up the international value chain,” he wrote.
Australia has been encouraging farmers and producers to diversify export markets beyond its largest trading partner after China banned $20 billion in Australian exports in 2020 over a political dispute that has now largely eased.
Mr Albanese noted that three-quarters of Australia’s exports to China come from Western Australia.
“We want to strengthen Australia’s economic resilience by deepening and diversifying our trading relationships, while also taking steps to ensure that foreign investment continues to serve our national interests,” he wrote.
Foreign Minister Albanese told ABC radio on Tuesday that Australian authorities had expressed concerns to the Chinese embassy about an Australian journalist being blocked by Chinese authorities during Premier Li’s signing ceremony at Parliament House.
Sky News Australia presenter Chen Lei, who was jailed in Beijing for three years on national security charges and released in October, was among media covering Monday’s meeting but was blocked from camera view by two Chinese officials standing in front of her.
Cheng said Chinese authorities likely did not want him to appear in domestic news reports. Cheng was a prominent business anchor for China’s state-run news agency before his arrest, which coincided with a deterioration in relations between Australia and China.
The incident featured prominently in Australian media coverage of PM Lee’s Canberra meeting.
“If you look at the footage it was a pretty clumsy attempt,” Mr Albanese told the ABC, adding that Australian authorities had intervened.
“Australian journalists should not be hindered from carrying out their jobs and we have made that clear to the Chinese embassy,” he added.
The Chinese Embassy did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the incident.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham and Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.
