Albanese set to meet with China's President Xi

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese won’t immediately fix the fractured relationship between the two countries, or result in the removal of trade sanctions worth $20 billion.

Mr Albanese will meet President Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit on Tuesday afternoon, marking the first time since 2016 the Chinese leader has met with an Australian prime minister.

Dr Chalmers hailed the meeting as really important, and as a welcome opportunity to return the relationship back to normal, but warned all of Australia’s issues wouldn’t be resolved off the back of it.

“I don’t think anybody pretends that some of the issues that China has raised, certainly some of the issues that we have raised, will be solved overnight,” he told ABC radio.

“We give ourselves a much better chance where there’s engagement and dialogue and there will be today.”

Dr Chalmers reiterated the lifting of the tariffs was a key issue for the relationship to stabilise.

“These trade restrictions are obviously not in Australia’s interests, not in the interest of our employers and our exporters,” he said.

“There’s a sense of working together, where there is agreement, there is common ground, and I think that is a really, really important start.”

He said the government remained deeply concerned over the detention of two Australians, including journalist Cheng Lei who has been held in custody for more than two years now and hasn’t been allowed contact with her family.

“A bit like the trade restrictions, I think Australia has made its views pretty clear over a longer period of time when it comes to the detention of these two people,” Dr Chalmers said.

While Mr Albanese would not reveal what he plans to discuss with the Chinese president, he considered it a success that a meeting was taking place.

“For six years we have not had any dialogue and it is not in Australia’s interest to not have dialogue with our major trading partners,” he told reporters in Bali.

“We will have a constructive dialogue. I will put Australia’s position on a range of issues, and of course, Australia’s positions on most of those is very well known.”

China’s trade sanctions on Australian products, security muscle-flexing and relationship with Russia will provide a backdrop for the significant meeting.

The head of Australia’s peak business group, in Bali for the B20 meeting of industry representatives, described it as a “tremendous reset” with China.

“We’ve obviously had a set of difficulties in the relationship, but you can’t fix those if you don’t have a dialogue,” Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacott said.

“This creates an opportunity for businesses to come in behind that reset the prime minister has done and start building those ... relationships.”

The prime minister’s meeting comes after Mr Xi met United States President Joe Biden on Monday afternoon.

Mr Xi said he hoped they would “chart the right course for the China-US relationship” and that he was prepared for a “candid and in-depth exchange of views” with Mr Biden.

Mr Albanese has also confirmed bilateral talks with the new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Leaders from the world’s strongest economies have descended on the Indonesian island of Bali for the G20 summit.

They aim to tackle the challenges faced across the world including inflation, climate change and the long-term effects of the pandemic.

with Associated Press