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Victoria Ruan

China and Australia may sign a long-awaited free-trade agreement (FTA) as soon as this week, Chinese and Australian media reported, a deal that will facilitate bilateral trade and investment and also help Beijing  counter the influences of another major regional pact led by Washington.
After nine years of lengthy negotiations, Australia would become the biggest developed economy to sign an FTA deal with China, following a similar pact between Beijing and Seoul on June 1.
Australia is also one of the 12 nations led by the United States in talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership  (TPP), which seeks to link 40 per cent of the global economy, with China so far excluded.
Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng would fly to Australia this week to finalise the FTA text, the National Business Daily reported on Monday,  without citing any sources.
The Australian, a newspaper owned by News Corp, said the text would be released on Thursday.
An official at the Ministry of Commerce told the South China Morning Post the two nations had agreed late last year to sign the deal this month, but the exact date was still being finalised.
Trade between the two countries hit  US$136.9 billion last year. An FTA deal will eliminate all import tariffs for Australian products such as iron ore, diary, wool and cotton to the mainland, and for most Chinese products that are shipped to Australia.
The threshold for investment into each other’s markets will also be greatly lowered. In 2014, iron ore imported from Australia to the mainland, the world’s largest consumer of the commodity, rose 32 per cent, to a record 548 million tonnes.
The US-led TPP, which has been making progress towards being realised, is part of Washington’s strategy to counter Beijing’s growing economic and diplomatic influences in the region.
“For Beijing, reaching more favourable trade pacts with other countries will dramatically offset the blows likely exerted on China by the TPP deal,” Liu Yuanchun,  head of the global economy and trade department at Renmin University, told the Post.
United States President Barack Obama  on Friday gained “fast-track” approval for the TPP pact, but the approval is attached to wider legislation that remains stuck in the House of Representatives. They are expected to revisit the wider legislation today.  
Washington has demanded that newcomers to the TPP must meet high standards on issues such as intellectual property rights, which China has found hard to follow.
Gao said in March that China was paying attention to the progress of the TPP deal, while he vowed to “unswervingly push ahead and speed up” the pace of China’s  FTA strategy.


China may sign free-trade deal with Australia this week 

Import tariffs on iron ore and other products from Australia such as diary, wool and cotton would be eliminated under the deal. Photo: Reuters

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The pact would soften the impact upon Beijing of the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, analysts say
