CANBERRA, May 20 (Xinhua) -- An Australian senior economist has called for Australia's cooperation with China on the global trade policies "needed for a V-shaped recovery" amid the spread of COVID-19.
China, whose share in Australia's trade grew in the first quarter on a year ago, "has cushioned the initial economic shock of the COVID-19 crisis on our economy," said Peter Drysdale, head of the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research at the Australian National University, in an opinion piece on Wednesday.
"These outcomes are the product of the huge market reform over the past 40 years that made China the largest trader in the world," he said in the article "Return to Prosperity Depends on Mending China Ties" published by the Australian Financial Review.
Beyond COVID-19,the Australia-China relationship is "central to the ambitions of the Australian community for economic recovery and reconstruction; it's crucial to forging co-operative strategies that preserve prosperity and political stability in the Asian region; and it's critical to help secure the rules-based global order," said Drysdale.
"On these three issues Australia's and China's strategic interests converge," he added.
"A strategic foreign policy priority for both is to work together with neighbors to engineer a more rapid economic recovery from the crisis. China will be a central part of the co-operation and recovery effort," he said. Enditem
