Albanese raises jet flare incident with Chinese premier ‘very directly’

Kuala Lumpur/Singapore: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese raised Australia’s concerns about last week’s close encounter between a People’s Liberation Army aircraft and an Australian Air Force jet “very directly” with Chinese Premier Li Qiang during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit.

Speaking at the summit in Malaysia on Monday after becoming one of the first world leaders to meet with new Japanese Prime Minister and Quad partner Sanae Takaichi, Albanese also played down long-running concerns about the future of the security dialogue aimed at countering China. He suggested a leadership meeting could be held early next year.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has a bilateral meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of ASEAN in Malaysia.Credit: POOL photo

Albanese’s meeting with Li comes after a successful visit to Washington last week, where he inked a $13 billion rare earths mining and processing deal with US President Donald Trump aimed at weakening China’s stranglehold on the critical sector.

Hours before Albanese’s White House meeting, the Australian government accused Beijing of engaging in “unsafe and unprofessional” after a Chinese aircraft deployed flares close to an Australian P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft on Sunday over the South China Sea – the latest in a series of similar incidents between the two countries.

“He heard the message very directly,” Albanese told reporters in Kuala Lumpur on Monday when asked how Li responded.

“I’m not here to report in on what people say when I have meetings. I’m accountable for what I say. And I made the position directly clear that this was an incident of concern for Australia.

“We have disagreements, and friends are able to discuss issues frankly. I did that. I did that directly.”

Albanese would not be drawn on whether he discussed with Li the details of the rare earths deal struck with Trump, but said the pair had talked about “the relationship with the US” and the “success of my visit” to the United States.

Albanese met with Takaichi on Sunday, where the pair reaffirmed their commitment to the Quad grouping, which also includes India and the US, and their strategic co-operation in the region.

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“I also hope that our two countries can spearhead efforts so that we can push a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Takaichi told Albanese on the sidelines of the summit.

“Japan and Australia both have the will and capacity to realise these aspirations.”

Trump will meet Takaichi in Japan on Tuesday before heading to the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation meeting in Gyeongju, South Korea, where his expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time during his second term on Thursday. Albanese is also heading to South Korea later in the week for APEC.

China’s latest sweeping export controls on rare earths and magnets are expected to be a key topic of discussion at the Trump-Xi meeting, along with tariffs, fentanyl trafficking co-operation, other export controls, and Taiwan.

Earlier this month, a fragile trade truce between the US and China blew up again after the US moved to cut off technology exports to Chinese-owned subsidiaries of blacklisted companies. Beijing hit back with its far-reaching rare earths crackdown, leading Trump to threaten to impose an additional 100 per cent tariff on Chinese goods.

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The two countries’ top trade negotiators appeared to broker a pathway for de-escalation on Sunday after two days of talks on the ASEAN sidelines, paving the way for Trump and Xi to sign off on a deal when they meet in South Korea on Thursday.

In a series of interviews with American TV networks following the talks, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he believed China would delay its rare earths restrictions “for a year while they re-examine it”, while the US would drop its latest tariff threat.

“I would expect that the threat of the 100 per cent [tariff] has gone away, as has the threat of the immediate imposition of the Chinese initiating a worldwide export control regime,” Bessent said.

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