Australia and China can rebuild trust through practical confidence-building measures and cooperative projects, especially in the Pacific, where shared interests are urgent.

Working together towards a common goal is the best way to deepen understanding and build trust. This is a truism in international as well as personal relationships. In the case of Australia-China relations, I call on my own experience as evidence that this approach works.

Before the minerals export boom, the bedrock of Australia-China economic relations was wheat, wool, sugar and other agricultural commodities. Twenty-five years ago, Australia was the world’s largest producer of fine wool and China was emerging as the largest textile manufacturer. The then Australian Wool Corporation and its offshore arm, the International Wool Secretariat, engaged me to establish cooperative links between the two industries so that technically advanced and fashionable Chinese products could take Australian wool products into Europe and the Americas. Working with designers and textile mills across the breadth of China – including Hong Kong and Taiwan – experts on both sides shared information and worked to solve problems. Australia benefited and so did China.

That was several decades ago, but such cooperation could be revived and even expanded in this decade. For Australia, stabilising and securing long-term relations with China is more vital now than it was in the 1990s. Recent events have shown how fragile bilateral trust is and how much we need to rebuild confidence.

How to begin?........

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