Australian PM takes ‘goodwill’ into meeting with China’s Xi

By ROD McGUIRK
Associated Press

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he will soon meet Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first face-to-face talks between the nations’ leaders in five years. Albanese said he would meet Xi on Tuesday on the Indonesian island of Bali on the sidelines of the G-20 summit. Albanese did not answer directly when asked by a reporter in Bali how hopeful he was that the meeting would lead to China changing a series of official and unofficial trade barriers that are costing Australian exporters $13 billion a year. Albanese said: “We enter this discussion with goodwill.” The last Australian prime minister Xi met was Malcolm Turnbull on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Germany in 2017.