![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/745871892e62fb6aa7f858bfb21e5ee3.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nAustralia’s former ambassador to China says the relationship between the two countries remains fragile and vulnerable to shocks, saying stability will “remain a goal, not a given” for Canberra.<\/p>\n
Graham Fletcher became ambassador to China in 2019, just before the relationship veered into crisis in the wake of the Morrison government’s call for an independent inquiry into the COVID-19 outbreak in China, before helping to oversee the “stabilisation” of the relationship after Labor took office in 2022.<\/p>\n
In a new report for the Lowy Institute, Mr Fletcher said the government likely saw the “modest new normal” in the relationship as “good enough” and had quietly rebuffed efforts by China to expand cooperation on infrastructure and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Graham Fletcher says stability is “not a given”. (Twitter: Marise Payne)<\/p>\n
He said that was partly because China’s campaign of economic coercion demonstrated to Canberra that “any leverage China believes it possesses is liable to be exploited at times of political need”, which meant it was “prudent not to allow such leverage to accumulate”.<\/p>\n
The former ambassador said China and Australia would never be close because they had such radically different visions of how the region should operate.<\/p>\n
“The gulf in terms of diverging world views and national security agendas is simply too wide,” the report reads.<\/p>\n
“It would be pointless for Canberra to pursue such a goal; it recognises this and is realistic.”<\/p>\n
He said the “mismatch of world views and strategic agendas” would always leave the relationship “vulnerable to future disruption”.<\/p>\n
“China is more confident and demanding; Australia too is more confident and determined,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Fletcher said while a “cataclysm” such as China invading Taiwan was “always a possibility”, it was not a “strong [risk] at present”.<\/p>\n
But he said there was still a risk that the relationship could enter another downward spiral if there was an “accumulation of serious disagreements that cannot be successfully managed”, saying the government’s attempts to wrestle back control of the Port of Darwin from a Chinese owner could spark trouble.<\/p>\n
“Beijing is increasingly prickly, for example, about EU and US security-driven restrictions on its technology and investment and is developing mechanisms to push back that could be applied globally,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Canberra’s decision to return the Port of Darwin to Australian ownership faces dogged resistance and may well be conflated with US moves to exclude Chinese interests from the Panama Canal ports.”<\/p>\n
He also said “unrest or a political crisis in the Pacific Islands could sharpen the ongoing contest for influence there, with Canberra and Beijing pursuing different outcomes, and uniformed personnel on the ground”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s former ambassador to China says the relationship between the two countries remains fragile and vulnerable to shocks,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,23,21,2285,90514,28867,29685,40829],"class_list":["post-68672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-austrlia","tag-china","tag-graham-fletcher","tag-lowy-institute","tag-relationship","tag-risk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}