Australian PM Anthony Albanese wants to ask China's Xi Jinping to lift trade barriers
The Hindu
Both leaders will attend a Group of 20 meeting in Indonesia and then an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting in Thailand next week.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, on November 11, he would ask Chinese President Xi Jinping to lift billions of dollars in trade barriers in the event that the two leaders hold their first bilateral meeting.
Both leaders will attend a Group of 20 meeting in Indonesia and then an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum meeting in Thailand next week.
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Mr. Albanese was speaking in Sydney before departing Australia on Friday for an East Asia Summit in Cambodia, which Xi is not expected to attend.
A face-to-face meeting between the Chinese and Australian leaders would mark a major reset in a bilateral relationship that plumbed new depths under the nine-year rule of Australia’s previous conservative government.
Beijing had banned Minister-to-Minister contacts and imposed a series of official- and unofficial trade barriers on products including wine, coal, beef, seafood and barley in recent years that cost Australian exporters 20 billion Australian dollars ($13 billion) a year. Mr. Albanese said a meeting with Xi was “not locked in at this point in time.”
“We obviously will be attending the same conferences, or at least two of them (G20 and APEC) over the next nine days. And I would welcome a meeting if it occurs over that time,” Mr. Albanese said.