China’s third-highest ranking person gets up close with Aussie wildlife as Wong reiterates ‘very consequential’ relationship for Pacific

One of China’s top-ranking political figures has posed with local wildlife on his four-day visit Down Under – just days after Penny Wong reiterated Australia’s relationship with the eastern superpower was “very consequential” for the Pacific. Zhao Leji, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China, was met by a crowd of supporters when he touched down in Brisbane at the weekend. On Sunday, the top legislator visited the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane’s south, meeting dignitaries while getting a crash course on some of Australia’s native animals. Among them, chairman Leji posed with kangaroos and koalas, and even an emu at the wildlife sanctuary – considered the oldest and largest koala sanctuary of its kind in the world. Photographs taken by NewsWire capture him performing a quintessential act at the park – feeding the iconic kangaroos. Chairman Leji is expected to conclude the Australian leg of his tour on Thursday. In New Zealand, he pledged a “sincere” friendship and called for tighter economic links between the two countries to advance their investment ties. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports chairman Leji emphasised co-operation in areas such as green transformation, the digital economy, artificial intelligence and connectivity. “China is ready to work with New Zealand to consolidate traditional friendship, enhance understanding and mutual trust, accommodate each other’s core interests and major concerns and be sincere friends and cooperative partners who treat each other as equals,” he said, according to the SCMP. Chairman Leji’s tour follows Anthony Albanese visiting Shanghai in July, part of a mammoth six-day state visit to discuss business and trade opportunities. Part of this included overseeing Tourism Australia sign a deal with Chinese travel giant Trip.com, to promote Australia as the place to see. A new tourism ad campaign reviving the tourism icon Ruby the Roo – a Mandarin-speaking kangaroo – and featuring A-list Chinese actor Yu Shi is part of this renewed agreement and was spruiked by the Prime Minister. But the trips come under the shadow of an increased militaristic rivalry with China – including two People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) frigates and a replenishment vessel conducting live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea earlier this year. Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Thursday said China had a “consequential relationship” in the Pacific and Australia still wanted one where they could co-operate with the superpower. “I describe it to Australians as co-operate where we can, disagree where we must, and engage in the national interest, and that’s the approach we take,” Ms Wong told host Palki Sharma on the Indian-run news website Firstpost. Asked if Australia would intervene militarily if China made a move on Taiwan, Ms Wong said she wasn’t going to respond to “hypotheticals”. “What I would say is Australia’s position, and I think it is India’s position, is that we don’t want to see any unilateral change to the status quo,” she said. “China will continue to assert its interests, and it’s doing what great powers do, which is to assert its interests. The challenge for Australia is, and I suspect for some other countries, is that some of those interests don’t align with our own, and so the question for diplomats is how do you manage that, how do you deal with it? And we deal with that, in part, through our other relationships, so how we envisage the Indo-Pacific is a region in balance, strategic balance, where various countries make a contribution to security that enables that balance, and India is central to that.”