Beijing Learns That What Goes Around Comes Around

Trade relations between China and Australia during that time grew ever closer. Australia had powerful agriculture and mining sectors and China needed what Australia had to offer. Australian cotton fed China's burgeoning textile industry. Now China's economy is neither as powerful nor as prominent as Beijing thought it was three years ago when it set out to punish Australia. Trade between Australia and China will surely grow, especially if Beijing follows through and eases the tariffs it imposed three years ago. Unless all of Australia's managers suffer severe memory loss, they will take a long time to return to China and likely never reach the relative dependence of 2020. Beijing high-handed behavior has redounded to China's detriment many times in the past.