PM sends a message back to Australia after China trip

Perth Now

17-07-2025

Anthony Albanese had an observation for viewers back home as he concluded a successful six-day tour of China.
"China isn't just Beijing or Shanghai, any more than Australia is Sydney or Melbourne," he told reporters.
As the prime minister flies out on Friday, he does so from a regional city many Australians have never heard of.
Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province and the gateway to China's west, is nonetheless home to 21 million people and a burgeoning hub of high-tech medical research, finance, fashion and culture.
Like the rest of China, Chengdu has been transformed beyond recognition since Mr Albanese's first visit to the country in the 1990s, as Deng Xiaoping's economic liberalisation tapped its potential to become a global superpower.
That transformation has not been lost on the prime minister, who in his second official leaders' visit to China, summed it up as a nation that "sees itself as confident going forward".
"I'm an urban policy nerd," he said.
"As you drove from the tennis centre to here yesterday afternoon, it struck me that there was more innovative architecture than in any city I have been to around the world."
Even from a vantage point atop Mr Albanese's high-rise hotel in central Chengdu, it's impossible to see an end to the skyscrapers stretching far off into the distance.
China is a country that knows how to build.
In less than three decades, it has built more kilometres of high-speed rail than exists in the rest of the world.
Naturally, China has an approach to development and community consultation that simply would not fly in the low-rise inner suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne.
Flying over the outskirts of major Chinese cities, farmland is seen directly abutting grids of high-rise apartment blocks.
But what it demonstrates is the sheer unfettered capacity of the Chinese economy, something members of Mr Albanese's front bench - converted to the supply-side progressive agenda - would like to capture to solve Australia's own housing and energy challenges.
And there is still so much latent potential in the nation of 1.4 billion citizens.
Economic growth has slowed and there are concerns that, with its ageing population and a looming middle-income trap, China may soon reach its peak.
But it's still on track to reach its GDP target of five per cent growth this year.
That would mean about another $1.4 trillion added to its economy - the equivalent of adding half of Australia to the Chinese economy in just one year.
On Thursday, Mr Albanese toured a manufacturing facility owned by Australian hearing aid producer Cochlear.
That Australian innovation - giving the gift of sound to someone who has never heard their parents' voices or birds chirping - should be a source of immense national pride, he said.
But it was also an example of the economic opportunity China presents Australia.
China is one of Cochlear's largest markets, having already sold about 50,000 units there.
But there are another 10 million people in China with severe to profound hearing loss that could benefit from a Cochlear device.
So as the country's middle class continues to swell, the potential benefit to both countries will continue to grow as well.