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Xi Jinping’s foreign policy behind worsening China-Australia ties, say former PMs Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd

  • China’s ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’ and activities in the South China Sea have strained its diplomatic relations with other countries, they said
  • But they also blamed hawkish figures in Scott Morrison’s government, like Peter Dutton, as well as conservative media, for inflaming tensions

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Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of a G20 Summit in Hangzhou in 2016. Turnbull said Xi had ‘changed’. Photo: Reuters
Australia’s former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd have attributed a dramatic deterioration in Sino-Australian relations to an aggressive foreign policy pursued under Chinese President Xi Jinping, while also criticising senior Australian government figures for needlessly inflaming tensions with Beijing.
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Speaking at a webinar on Tuesday, Turnbull and Rudd said Xi’s adoption of an increasingly nationalistic and strident foreign policy was the primary driver of worsening ties between Canberra and Beijing.

Turnbull, who led Australia between 2015 and 2018, said Beijing’s aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomacy and activities such as building artificial islands in the South China Sea had strained its relations with other countries and damaged its international standing.
Xi Jinping changed,” said Turnbull during the event hosted by La Trobe University in Melbourne. “I mean the China that we confront or encounter or engage with, led by Xi Jinping, is very different from the China led by his predecessors. You can’t get around that.”

Turnbull, whose government clashed with Beijing over its ban on Huawei Technologies Co and the passage of foreign interference legislation, said Chinese diplomacy had shown itself to be “out of touch”, describing an incident last year in which the Chinese embassy in Canberra circulated a list of 14 grievances as “truly one of the nuttiest things I have ever seen”.

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