Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong will travel to China this week in a move labelled “the first step … on a pretty long road” to healing relations between the two countries.

It’s the first trip by an Australian Foreign Minister to Beijing since 2018 and comes as tensions look to be easing slightly between the two countries.

North Asia Correspondent at The Age, Eryk Bagshaw, says there’s one action which would be “a very significant measure of potential success” of the trip.

Press PLAY below to hear what it would take for the trip to be deemed a success

“You would, I think, hope Australia, in terms of concrete actions, would look for measures like the potential release of detained Australians Yang Hengjun and Cheng Lei,” Mr Bagshaw told Heidi Murphy, filling in for Tom Elliott.

He says Australia’s position is improving.

“Australia can voice its concern about China’s activities without necessarily the fear of more retribution because basically China has fired all the shots in the tank … there’s not much more they can do to try and coerce Australia and now we’re seeing a situation where some of that is being wound back because it’s becoming counter-productive,” he said.

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