In two closely choreographed visits to Washington and Beijing, timed just 10 days apart, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has regained Australia’s footing on the tightrope between the United States and China. In Washington at the end of October, he reaffirmed Australia’s commitment to its US alliance, and then in Beijing, he rebuilt the working relationship with China which had collapsed under his predecessors Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. It has been an impressive display of diplomatic agility, but Australia’s big strategic challenge remains.

Mr Albanese’s aim has been to return Australia to the happy position it enjoyed for so long, relying on China to make it rich while depending on the US to keep it safe. Those were the days when Australian political leaders on both sides repeated the mantra that “Australia does not have to choose between America and China”. That hope started to look very uncertain in 2017, when Canberra followed Washington in raising the alarm about China’s growing power and regional ambitions, bringing a distinct chill in relations with Beijing. They got a lot worse in 2020 when Mr Morrison – Mr Albanese’s immediate predecessor – ratcheted up anti-China rhetoric even further. Australia’s biggest trading partner retaliated by freezing all senior-level contacts and imposing billions of dollars’ worth of trade bans.