China has placed tariffs on Australian barley and wine in recent years, and suspended the live lobster trade and coal imports, until this week. It also blocked imports from eight beef exporters from Queensland, NSW and Victoria, over labelling non-compliance and COVID-19 related issues.
While Australian beef is still sold in China with 172,000 tonnes sent there last year, some of Australia's biggest abattoirs have been banned from selling to China since 2020. Authorities then cited labelling and other minor irregularities, and eight Australian meatworks are still on China's banned list.
China was a significant consumer of Australian coal until a non-official ban was imposed due to heightened political tensions between the two countries.
By massively curbing shipments of everything from timber to coal, lobsters, barley and wine, on pretexts including exaggerated concerns about trade practices and pest infestations, China imposed a A$24bn ($16bn) hit on Australia, representing 5.5% of its total annual exports.
China increasing beef intake in 2023, taking about 20% of the Australian market share.
Japan easily topped Australia's largest beef export customers last year, accounting for 214,305t of Australian chilled and frozen beef during 2022.
Since the UK left the EU, all Australian beef entering the UK has been subject to full tariffs and charges. Firstly, a brief explanation of how the new access arrangements will work. This year (2023) the UK tariff-free beef quota volume is 35,000t.
Relations between the two countries began to deteriorate in 2018 due to growing concerns of Chinese political influence in various sectors of Australian society including the Government, universities and media as well as China's stance on the South China Sea dispute.
Australia is China's sixth largest trading partner; it is China's fifth biggest supplier of imports and its tenth biggest customer for exports. Twenty-five per cent of Australia's manufactured imports come from China; 13% of its exports are thermal coal to China. A two-way investment relationship is also developing.
Penny Wong said that since the establishment of diplomatic relations 50 years ago, Australia and China have established extensive connections and achieved remarkable results in cooperation in various fields. A sound Australia-China relationship is in the interests of both sides.
Bilateral relations
After establishing diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1972, Australia established an embassy in Beijing in 1973. The Australia-China bilateral relationship is based on strong economic and trade complementarities and longstanding community and cultural links.
China has removed all remaining curbs on Australian coal imports, putting an end to trade restrictions that have been in place since 2020.
China has started buying Australian coal this month, signaling the end of an unofficial ban that ran for over two years, according to market sources and S&P Global Commodity Insights data.
The beef was banned after the BSE outbreak in 1996 when cattle were infected by what became commonly known as Mad Cow Disease.
We use only 100% Aussie grown beef to serve you the best beef burgers, sourced from farmers across the country.
2/ Australian beef is packed full of flavour (and nutrition)
Grass-fed beef is also more nutritious than grain-fed beef as it has higher levels of omega-3 acids and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). But there's plenty of great Australian steak to be found for lovers of buttery grain-fed beef, too.
One way or another, our economy would shrink. By how much is hard to say. If 40% of our imports from China disappeared, then 1.26% of GDP would disappear: Imports are approximately 15% of U.S. consumption, and China's share of that is about 21%, so our imports from China represent 3.15% of GDP.
Most of China's imports consist of machinery and apparatus (including semiconductors, computers, and office machines), chemicals, and fuels. The main import sources are Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, the countries of the European Union (EU), and the United States.
It maintains significant ties with ASEAN and has become steadfastly allied with New Zealand, through long-standing ties dating back to the 1800s. The country also has a longstanding alliance with the United States of America.
Australia has a mature relationship with Russia that allows us to confront our differences directly when necessary but work constructively where our interests intersect.
China buys more of Australia's agricultural produce than any other country. ChAFTA provides Australia with an advantage over our major agricultural competitors, including the United States, Canada and the European Union. It also counters the advantages Chile and New Zealand have enjoyed through their FTAs with China.
The dominant supplier has always been Ireland, with a market share of almost 70 per cent. No other country accounts for more than eight per cent of UK imports. The EU supplies over 90 per cent of imports, with no single non-EU country supplying more than three per cent of the total.
EU countries continue to be the main source for FFD imports and are therefore essential to the UK's food security. 39% of FFD imports by value were despatched from 4 EU countries (the Netherlands, Republic of Ireland, Germany, and France) in 2020.
In 2020, the top partner countries from which United Kingdom Imports Food Products include France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Ireland.