Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Minister of Foreign Affairs Australia, Marise Payne, said the ambassador China in Canberra, Cheng Jingye, left the country. Jingye’s departure was called after his term ended amid deteriorating relations between the two countries.
Jingye became ambassador in 2016 as tensions rose between Australia and China. He left office in Canberra after his term ended.
“I spoke to the Chinese ambassador a while ago, my office spoke to him last week before his imminent departure,” Payne was quoted as saying. Reuters, Thursday (28/10).
Payne said China was still in the process of appointing its new envoy to replace Jingye. He hoped that the Beijing envoy could be sent to the country soon.
Relations between China and Australia have been strained since 2018, when Canberra banned Huawei’s nascent 5G broadband network.
However, relations between the two cooled again when Australia called for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which was first reported in China in 2019.
China then responded by imposing tariffs on a number of Australian commodities, including wine and barley, limited imports of Australian beef, coal and wine.
The move was called “economic coercion” by the United States.
Their relationship did not go well, after Australia agreed to the trilateral AUKUS agreement, which would build 8 nuclear-powered submarines. China is furious about the deal.
Some say AUKUS is an attempt to balance China’s strength in the Indo-Pacific region.
(isa/bac)
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