People look at a copy of the Global Times in Beijing, 2023 (Image: AAP/AP/Mark Schiefelbein)
People look at a copy of the Global Times in Beijing, 2023 (Image: AAP/AP/Mark Schiefelbein)

After almost three years of COVID-induced isolation, there’s been a switch in China’s diplomacy. Beijing, armed with a new leadership team but still deferent to long-term leader Xi Jinping, has swung back into action, with a flurry of world leaders attending the capital and senior Chinese leaders making visits around the globe.

Together with its so-far successful efforts to make peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as its attempts at slowing or ending the conflict in Ukraine, a gentler public face of China is emerging — that is, if we put to one side its recent military build-up.

But Australia finds itself in the undesirable position of having no staff journalists from major Australian news outlets to report on either the post-COVID reopening of China or the stream of visits by global leaders to the Middle Kingdom as it strives to develop, with Russia and other allies, a centralised alliance undominated by the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Major Australian media publications have not had a staff correspondent on the mainland — the ABC had been in Beijing since 1973 — since September 2020 when The Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith and the ABC’s Bill Birtles were rushed out of the country by their respective news organisations. Due to publications changing correspondents roughly every four years, The Australian’s Will Glasgow and The Sydney Morning Herald’s/The Age’s Eryk Bagshaw, earmarked for China jobs, had not yet taken up their posts. So far they report China from Taiwan and Singapore.

The exit of Australian correspondents was sparked by a warning from the Foreign Affairs Department that they may be in trouble. The context was the rapidly deteriorating relationship between Canberra and Beijing. Their employer doubtless acted with the best intentions, but unlike reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post who were expelled (which simply involves cancelling the journalists’ visas so they must leave the country), they fled.

But today the NYT, WSJ and WaPo all now have bureaus in Beijing — and some in Shanghai. Australian reporters are instead based in Taiwan (Birtles and Glasgow), Tokyo (Smith) and — a bit ludicrously — Singapore (Bagshaw). It’s clearly good to have reporters in Taiwan, with it being at the centre of China’s expansive intentions in the Pacific, but there is no substitute for having reporters on the ground.

It’s not just about being in Beijing. It’s about being able to travel around China’s 31 provinces and municipalities and report from places as disparate and culturally unique as Xinjiang in the north-west, Yunnan in the south, which borders half a dozen South and South-East Asian countries, the manufacturing hubs of the east coast and the coalmines of Inner Mongolia. All the complaints about Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ visit to Beijing without any media would have been moot if there were locally based representatives.

It’s worth noting that for the recent Boao Forum for Asia — loosely known as China’s version of the annual World Economic Forum — the bid to take journalists there by Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals, a major sponsor, was turned down. That’s been Forrest’s practice since he began sponsoring the show, and he will have been furious at the dearth of stories about his company, certainly part of the reason for his sponsorship. Some have pondered whether this unusual rejection is due to the lack of any permanent media representatives for the Australian press in Beijing.

Of course, there are Australian journalists still in China, most prominently Stephen McDonell for the BBC, who the ABC in its wisdom pushed out in 2016 only for him to be snapped up by the West’s largest media organisation. McDonell continues to be one of the best TV journalists in China and remains unafraid to dive into controversial stories.

There are others who work for Chinese state media, and there is of course the detention of Chinese-Australian journalist Cheng Lei and Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun, which the Australian government is trying to resolve. 

So why have Australian news organisations not headed back to Beijing? Well, it’s not just Australian media that have fallen into this hole, but Canberra as well. Ministerial visits dried up six years ago, and with them visits by federal and state bureaucracies. Although they are far less important in terms of trade and relationships, the sister city and state relationships are valuable in terms of second- and third-track relationships. There’s now about half a generation of politicians and bureaucrats who have not seen the inside of a Chinese hotel room or attended a boozy official banquet.

All this leaves Australia somewhat on the sidelines in Beijing, where face-to-face meetings and personal connections are highly valued. It’s well worth noting that two recent guests of Xi were freshly elected Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and longtime Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Both were effusive in their praise for China, despite a dispute in the South China Sea on the Malaysian side.

The signs of a new, softer and more diplomatic attitude from Beijing were on display last week when Chinese Vice Foreign Affairs Minister Ma Zhaoxu, a former ambassador to Australia, visited Australia. He met business people and former diplomats and politicians, among them former trade minister Andrew Robb, who infamously organised China’s lease of the port of Darwin.

Ma was the first senior Chinese leader to visit Australia in six years and his main aim was to meet Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) secretary Jan Adams in Canberra.

“The talks covered a range of bilateral and international topics, including trade, consular, human rights, strategic competition, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” DFAT said. “Secretary Adams reiterated that it was in the shared interests of Australia and China to continue on the path of stabilising the bilateral relationship.”

Meanwhile, China has continued its military modernisation and build-up, highlighted by its 7.2% increase in defence spending in this year’s March budget — a figure that American think tanks believe is even higher.

As visits from both sides and state leaders and business people increase quite quickly, it would appear vital that Australia has media representatives on the ground to tell Australians first-hand what is happening in a country on which we continue to depend for our prosperity and whose influence — and potential bid for defence dominance — in the region is only growing.

Michael Sainsbury was the Beijing-based correspondent for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for The Australian from 2009-12 and China bureau chief for the Daily Mail from 2012-13.