Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will allow the export of Australian rock lobsters back to China by end of the year.
Following a one-on-one meeting with CCP Premier Li Qiang of the 44th ASEAN summit, Albanese released a statement confirming the move.
“This, of course, will be in time for Chinese New Year, and this will be welcomed by the people engaged in the live lobster industry in places like Geraldton and South Australia and Tasmania and so many parts of particularly regional Australia, where this is just one of the elements that produce jobs for Australians,” the prime minister said.
“With our patient, calibrated and deliberate approach, we’ve restored Australian trade with our largest export market.”
The ban on lobster exports was implemented during the pandemic after the Australian government called for a full investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
The CCP responded strongly to the comments, rolling out a series of bans on a range of Australian exports from wine, barley, timber, beef, and lobster. Iron ore was untouched given China’s reliance on the Australian commodity.
Meanwhile, the current ASEAN summit is being held in Laos, where regional security and trade issues are expected to dominate the agenda, as well as Beijing’s aggression in the region after it fired an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) into the Pacific on Sept. 25.
Trade, Security Continues to Take Centre Stage
Albanese confirmed he'd spoken to Li about the “full range of regional and international security issues.”That included Australia’s concerns about “destabilising actions in the South China Sea and about China’s recent missile ballistic test.”
He had stressed the importance of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and the need to “avoid incidents such as the ones that have occurred in the past [between China and Australia’s militaries in the region].
“So much international trade goes through the South China Sea,” he said. “We need to have military-to-military engagement, cooperation and dialogue to avoid any misadventure, and I put forward our view about the importance of those international rules being upheld.”
New Focus on South-East Asia
While China remains Australia’s biggest trading partner, the Australian government has identified South-East Asia as a key market.
Security issues in Burma, also known as Myanmar, and the South China Sea, having posed consistent challenges to ASEAN, are likely to be the main issues discussed at the broader summit.
Thailand has called for increased engagement with Burma ahead of a planned election, which would take place in an environment in which the ruling military junta, which took power in a 2020 coup—sparking a nationwide rebellion and civil war—refuses to hold talks with its opponents, whom it calls terrorists.
Meanwhile, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei—along with Taiwan—have overlapping claims to parts of the South China Sea, while Beijing claims sovereignty over virtually all of it and has become increasingly aggressive in its attempts to enforce its view.
