‘Handsome boy’ Albanese may have managed to turn China’s iron fist into a velvet glove

Just before the Reserve Bank of Australia hiked interest rates, and Without A Fight stormed home in the Melbourne cup, China’s premier, Li Qiang, adopted a flirtatious tone in Beijing with his guest Anthony Albanese.

Tongue firmly in cheek, Li said to the Australian prime minister: “On our way into the hall, I shared with you that I see on social media of China … there are many sharing of short videos about your trip to China … including a video of you running along the river with a yellow jersey.”

This was Albanese’s Matildas jersey. In shades of John Howard – the prime ministerial power walker in a track suit – Albanese had gone for a brisk walk down the Bund in Shanghai before relocating to Beijing.

“People were saying that we have a handsome boy coming from Australia,” Li said.

It was unclear who these “people” were. This handsome boy tete-a-tete happened on the red carpet during a ceremonial arrival in the Great Hall of the People.

The premier received his Australian guest in China’s capital on Tuesday, and the two strode through the cavernous, marble-clad reception room to inspect 144 People’s Liberation Army personnel standing rigidly to attention, bayonets fixed. This implacable display of hard power was arrayed in front of a huge tapestry depicting the Great Wall of China, the monumental fortification built during imperial times to repel invaders.

This is the rapprochement tour, and the Chinese have been disposed over the past few days to being hospitable to the Australian delegation. It is possible Albanese being handsome was the velvet glove around the iron fist of Tuesday’s hegemonic display.

Later, Australia’s prime minister told reporters he didn’t quite know how to respond to being China’s new matinee idol. “I think I’ll let that one go through to the keeper.”

During their meeting, Li professed he and Albanese were now comrades, having met in Jakarta, New Delhi and Shanghai. “Chinese people say at the first meeting, we are new acquaintances and the second time, we’re familiar with each other, and on the third meeting, we are old friends.” Beijing, on Li’s count, was the fourth meeting between these two leaders.

Li also had a droll salutation for the travelling Australian media pack; as the premier noted, this was a “large delegation”.

Ahead of Journalists’ Day in China (celebrated on Wednesday if you are interested), the premier wanted to take this opportunity “to send my long regards to our Chinese and Australian journalists – and I hope our journalists will give objective and fair reports on each other’s country to promote mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples.” Just for the record. The Chinese government has refused to give visas to Australian correspondents for at least three years. Objective and fair reports are hard to deliver from a distance of thousands of kilometres.

The light tone of Tuesday’s discussion exemplifies the success of the visit. Normal diplomatic conventions have been restored between Australia and China after years of spiralling contention. China clearly wants to re-engage and reset with the world.

That theme, Xi Jinping’s desire for “mutual understanding” and “win-win cooperation” (as opposed to the recent lived reality of wolf warrior diplomacy, spiralling trade wars with Australia and the US, and opportunistic acts of aggression in the air or the sea) is plastered all over state media here.

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Tuesday’s China Daily splashed on its front page president Xi’s four bilateral meetings on Monday – one with Albanese, one with the Cuban prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, another with the Serbian prime minister, Ana Brnabic, and another with South Africa’s deputy president, Paul Mashatile. The China Daily shared the official dictum. Xi did not want to form exclusive small circles “or engage in group politics, or bloc confrontation in the Asia-Pacific region”. Xi believed “small circles cannot solve the major problems facing the world”.

For his part, Albanese liked the idea of being “an old friend at the third meeting”. Picking up Li’s informality and running with it, Australia’s prime minister said friendship was “certainly something that I feel and I’m sure will continue to develop in the future”.

Friendship or no, Albanese flies out of Beijing on Tuesday night bound for the Pacific, a region on the frontline of China’s soft power offensive. Albanese wants the Pacific to remain Australia’s sphere of influence, not Beijing’s. The prime minister appearing in the Cook Islands on Wednesday projects that point.

Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, will also hurtle from Beijing to Tokyo to check in with our Japanese ally after all the fanfare of rapprochement in China. Squaring yet more circles, Australia is also hopeful Joe Biden will meet Xi at a looming regional summit in San Fransisco.

Albanese is now coming to the end of a punishing schedule of international travel. As Christmas approaches, the prime minister’s focus will have to shift to the home front.

Acutely conscious of a growing, surly drumbeat at home about all the time he’s spent on special purpose flights crisscrossing the globe, Albanese empathised with people at home absorbing yet another interest rate hike on Cup Day. The prime minister noted the central bank was “independent”; it’s not us guys, it’s those Martin Place bureaucrats watching the global economy, watching the consumer price index at home.

Albanese insisted Australian prime ministers needed to be in the world. “We need to be engaged because we know that impacts of the global economy on energy prices, for example, feed through into the Australian economy,” he said. “That’s why a major focus of this visit has been on Australian job creation, on the benefit that we can get by dealing with the impediments to our trade, which have been there.”

Lest anyone imagine Albanese’s mind was untethered at 37,000 feet rather than at the kitchen tables of swinging voters, he offered this final observation before departing for the Pacific Islands Forum. “We are very focused on Australian jobs and the Australian economy and Australian living standards, which is why we continue to have as our number one priority cost-of-living relief.”