China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, will visit Australia for the first time in seven years, with next week’s trip being locked in just hours after Beijing offered a reprieve to Australian winemakers.
China imposed tariffs of up to 200% on Australian wine at the height of the diplomatic dispute in 2020, alongside measures affecting a range of products including barley, red meat, seafood and coal.
Australia has since been in the grips of a wine glut with an oversupply equivalent to more than 2.8bn bottles of wine after vintage last year.
Wang, who last visited Australia in 2017, was widely speculated to be planning another trip but the Albanese government only publicly confirmed the visit after a strong signal the wine dispute was about to be resolved.
The Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, will hold talks with Wang in Canberra on Wednesday next week.
The talks are officially known as the Australia-China Foreign and Strategic Dialogue, a longstanding format to exchange views on bilateral, regional and international issues.
It is the first meeting in this format since the two ministers met in Beijing in December 2022.
Wong is expected to raise the push to remove the remaining trade impediments, along with other issues such as human rights, conflict prevention and regional security.
In a statement late on Wednesday, Wong said dialogue was “central to a constructive relationship with China and to supporting regional peace and stability”.
“Australia’s approach is consistent; we seek to cooperate with China where we can, disagree where we must and engage in our national interest,” she said in a statement late on Wednesday.
“It’s Australia’s view that a stable bilateral relationship would enable both countries to pursue respective national interests, if we navigate our differences wisely.”
Consular issues are also expected to be on the agenda, after the Australian government said last month it was “appalled” at the imposition of a suspended death sentence on the detained Australian academic Dr Yang Hengjun.
Since coming to office in 2022, the Albanese government has sought to “stabilise” the relationship with China – Australia’s largest trading partner – and has avoided heated rhetoric.
But the government has avoided calling its approach to China a “reset” because it maintains it is not retreating on Australia’s policy positions, including on the Aukus plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
The improved relationship has seen the removal of most of the trade impediments and the release of the detained Australian journalist Cheng Lei.
China’s commerce ministry revealed on Tuesday its “interim draft determination” that the tariffs on Australian wine were no longer necessary. It has previously removed tariffs on Australian barley.
The Australian trade minister, Don Farrell, said he expected China’s commerce ministry to make “a final and absolute determination” about whether to scrap the wine tariffs within two weeks, but the preliminary decision was a good sign.
“I think this decision will be the final decision – they are just going through their processes,” Farrell told ABC Radio Adelaide on Wednesday.
“No, we can’t sell tariff-free wine into China today, but I would be very hopeful that by the end of this month, so the end of March, that we will be able to do that.”
In the case of barley and wine, World Trade Organization panels were poised to give final rulings on whether China’s measures breached trade rules, when Australia agreed to suspend the proceedings.
This approach was seen as an off-ramp for China to scrap the tariffs without admitting fault, although Australia had always promised to resume the WTO cases if Beijing ended up leaving the tariffs in place.
Earlier this week, China’s state-owned Global Times newspaper said both countries were “making significant efforts to repair their relations” and this was expected to “lead to the settlement of more trade disputes”.
China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, told an Australian Financial Review summit on Monday that things were “moving on the right track and in the right direction”.
The Coalition’s trade spokesperson, Kevin Hogan, said the wine shift suggested China was retreating from “wolf warrior” diplomacy but the tariffs “should never have been imposed in the first place”.
