China-Australia relationship 'always challenging'

20 Aug 2009, 1:32 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says Australia's relationship with China is always full of challenges and will be for some time to come.

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Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says Australia's relationship with China is always full of challenges and will be for some time to come.

Mr Rudd played down reports that Australia's Ambassador to China, Geoff Raby, has come home in the wake of a continuing chill in relations over the visit to Australia this month of Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer.

The prime minister said it was important to have a "calm, measured" way of handling the relationship between Australia and China.

"The China-Australia relationship is always full of challenges," Mr Rudd told reporters at a joint press conference with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key on Thursday.

"Can I say, it always has been thus, and it will be thus for quite a long time to come.

"That is because we share enormous common interests with our friends in China and we have continuing differences, they are differences of values and from time to time, differences of interests."

While there appeared to be a diplomatic cooling over the Kadeer visit, the countries announced Australia's largest-ever export deals this week, with an agreement to sell $50 billion worth of liquefied natural gas to China.

Echoing comments earlier today by Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, Mr Rudd said there could well be "further bumps in the road" ahead which would need to be negotiated.

"China has significant interests in Australia," Mr Rudd said.

"China's interests in Australia go to its long term needs for resource security, China's interests in Australia go to the role which we have in the wider deliberations of the Asia-Pacific region.

"Therefore, we approach this relationship mindful of our interests in China, mindful of China's interests in Australia."

Mr Rudd said Australia's ambassadors regularly returned home for consultations.

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