KEY TRADING PARTNER
China is one of Australia’s most important economic partners, accounting for nearly one-third of its total trade.
Albanese is accompanied on his visit by a delegation of key business leaders who will attend a CEO roundtable in Beijing.
His trip will last until Friday and will also take him to the southwestern city of Chengdu.
He is also accompanied by a travelling media pack, members of which said they were briefly surrounded by security guards and told to hand over footage to police.
A small group of reporters were filming outside Beijing’s Bell and Drum Towers when they were stopped by security guards.
National broadcaster ABC’s reporter Stephen Dziedzic said he was “quickly surrounded by a number of security guards, who said they were going to call the police and we didn’t have permission to leave”.
“We had the necessary permissions, we had the right visas, but nonetheless perhaps that hadn’t been passed all the way down the chain,” he told ABC.
Australian broadcaster SBS, which also has a correspondent on the trip, reported that journalists were briefly surrounded and told to hand over footage to police.
The group was allowed to leave after Australian diplomats intervened, the ABC and SBS reported.
Albanese’s trip also comes as China’s sweeping territorial claims ruffle feathers in the region, particularly pertaining to the South China Sea.
Another key point of contention is the fate of northern Australia’s Darwin Port, whose Chinese-owned controller could be forced to sell it to a local buyer by Albanese’s government.
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