‘Temperature dramatically reduced’: China will lift trade bans, Turnbull says

London: Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said that China will lift its trade bans on Australia as Beijing is looking for a way to climb down from the unsuccessful sanctions.

Beijing slapped bans worth tens of billions of dollars on Australian coal, lobsters, barley and wine as relations between the Morrison government and China soured during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Links between the two countries reached a nadir when Chinese officials refused to answer phone calls from Australian counterparts.

But the relationship has thawed with the election of Labor to government, with Foreign Minister Penny Wong visiting Beijing in December and Trade Minister Don Farrell invited to visit the Chinese capital “in the near future”.

Turnbull told the Alliance of Democracies that China was retreating because its sanctions had not worked.

“It was designed to get Australia to knuckle under, it was completely counterproductive … public opinion moved very considerably against the government of China,” Turnbull said overnight.

“So I thought at the time that at some point they will seek to dismount.

“I’d had a couple of experiences of this happening in the past, they look for an exit ramp, sometimes you can help provide an exit ramp, I’ve done that in the past.”

Turnbull said the change of government last May had provided Beijing with that opportunity.

“The temperature has dramatically reduced and more cordial, normal intercourse is happening, and I would expect the trade sanctions to be lifted,” he said.

Turnbull added that they hadn’t worked because although they had harmed Australian wine sales, they hadn’t affected barley or the sale of coal, with prices at record highs.

“The trade sanctions had a very modest impact overall and it failed, it was a counterproductive policy,” he said.

Turnbull said the fact that China didn’t sanction gas or iron ore imports showed the sanctions were only ever “performative”.

Turnbull said that China’s “apoplectic” response to Morrison’s COVID inquiry call was also hamfisted as it drew more attention to the issue and that without Beijing’s heated reaction, “it would have vanished without trace”.

He said Chinese President Xi Jinping’s decision to mimic the “bombastic” approach to foreign relations of former US President Donald Trump was also shortsighted.

“Xi Jinping missed an enormous opportunity when Trump came along,” Turnbull said.

“Trump was erratic, he was bullying, he shook up alliances, he created great uncertainty in the West – threatened to pull out of NATO, threatened all his alliances in the region, in this region.

“And that was an opportunity for China to be the exact opposite, to be consistent, calm, measured, respectful, but instead they went, he sort of followed Donald down the same sort of rabbit hole of belligerence and bombast,” Turnbull said.

“They wasted four years.”

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