Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that relations with Australia were moving in the right direction in the latest sign of an improvement in ties between the major trading partners.
Mr Xi made the comments in a congratulatory message for Australia Day sent to Australian Governor-General David Hurley, the Xinhua state-run news agency reported.
A spokesperson for the governor-general confirmed that Mr Hurley had received the message from Mr Xi.
Australia and China "have reviewed the past and looked to the future, making active efforts towards the right direction of improving and growing China-Australia ties", Mr Xi said, Xinhua reported.
The development comes after Xinhua last week reported that Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao would meet Australia's minister for trade, Don Farrell, via video "in the near future". It gave no date.
A 'nice gesture' but 'symbolic'
University of Sydney's director of the China studies centre, David Goodman, told the ABC that Mr Xi's message was a "nice gesture".
"But we mustn't put too much significance into it because, after all, this is a nice gesture on what is seen as being the National Day of Australia," he said.
"It didn't go to the government. It went to the governor-general.
"Everybody would know the difference between the government, the prime minister, and the governor-general. It is symbolic."
Professor Goodman said the message was, "in a sense", putting "a little pressure" on Australia's negotiators at the upcoming trade talks.
"I think that's the context in which it's been made. It's our National Day. Things are getting better. This is a kind of encouragement."
He added that it was "odd" that the message appeared to only have been reported in English-language Chinese media.
"The only time I can ever remember anything like this was criticism of, not of us necessarily, but other countries going out in English, but this isn't a criticism," he said. "This is far from it. If, at the end of the day, there is a lifting of sanctions and a greater encouragement of trade, that will be in Chinese as well as in English."
Australia-China relationship thawing
After some three years of tense relations over a range of issues including trade freezes, signs have emerged recently that ties between the two countries are warming.
China put unofficial bans on Australian products from coal to wine in 2020, after Australia called for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 and put a 5G network ban on China's telecom giant Huawei.
The Australian and Chinese trade ministers have not met since then, but Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong met her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, last month on the first visit to Beijing by an Australian minister since 2019.
Mr Xi met Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia in November, signalling the beginning of a thaw.
In January, China reportedly granted permission for select companies to resume importing Australian coal.
ABC/Reuters
