CHINESE warships could be heading to Australian ports this year after the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, took "a few small steps" towards military transparency and co-operation with President Hu Jintao.
Ms Gillard told the
Herald last night her key meeting with Mr Hu was "friendly in demeanour".
Her inaugural visit to Beijing as prime minister appears to have bookended two years of tensions which began with China's taking umbrage with the 2009 Australian defence white paper, which it believed painted China as a military threat.
Western defence analysts are also concerned about the potential for a maritime accident triggering war, given China's increasingly assertive conduct and the absence of the kind of maritime incident protocols that defused incidents between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Ms Gillard said neither Mr Hu nor the Premier, Wen Jiabao, raised any concerns about Australia's military relationships with the US, or its allies, and nor did she raise concerns about the People's Liberation Army.
Instead, Ms Gillard and Mr Hu yesterday moved to build greater military co-operation including livefire exercises at sea and Chinese warships dock in Australia.
"[We] indicated a preparedness to keep discussing defence co-operation," Ms Gillard told the
Herald in an interview last night. "We have indicated we are open to ships visiting Australian ports [and] there's some prospect that there will be some visiting before the end of the year.
"It's a few small steps on a journey to better understanding each other's military perspectives.
''Steps that enable us to better understand methods of organisation, protocols for working, are good things and obviously joint exercising assists with that."
Yesterday chief executives of a dozen of China's biggest resource buyers and investors joined Ms Gillard for lunch at the Australian embassy, where discussion focused on economics, investment and the resource trade.
Guests included Lou Jiwei, the head of China's sovereign wealth fund, which reportedly will soon receive a $US200 billion top-up from the government. Also present were the heads of two of China's biggest oil companies, five of its biggest metals and mining companies and two of its biggest banks.
Ms Gillard said the gathering showed strong interest in building rail and port infrastructure necessary to get Australian mining investments off the ground. They also raised concerns about skills shortages at mines under construction, and red tape at the state level and at the Foreign Investment Review Board.
Today Ms Gillard flies to London to attend the royal wedding.
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