Event: Australia-China CEO Roundtable in Beijing, China – Bran Black opening and closing remarks
Speakers: Business Council of Australia Chief Executive Bran Black
Date: 15 July 2025
Topics: Trade, Australia-China relations, ChAFTA
**Check against delivery**
Opening
Thank you to my esteemed co-Chair, Mr. Zhao Huan.
Good afternoon, my name’s Bran Black, and I’m the Chief Executive of the Business Council of Australia, and it’s my pleasure to join you here today as co-Chair.
Thank you to our Chinese hosts – the welcome and hospitality you have offered us has been wonderful.
It’s a particular privilege to sit here, in the Great Hall of the People, one of Beijing’s Ten Great Buildings and one of the most significant meeting places in the world.
I am pleased to be joined by the Business Council of Australia members – some of Australia’s key business leaders – who have travelled with me to be here.
I would like to acknowledge the leadership of our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, whose commitment to this Roundtable here in Beijing helps support Australian prosperity back home.
I also acknowledge our Australian representatives from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Austrade who are in attendance.
Thanks to them and their counterparts at the Ministry of Commerce for their invaluable assistance in making today’s event happen.
China and Australia have a long and deep relationship—a relationship best characterised by shared growth and opportunity.
Over 50 years ago we established diplomatic relations—at that time our two-way trade was less than $100 million.
Today that trade has ballooned by—staggeringly—a more than 300-fold increase to nearly $312 billion.
And the most recent surge in this trade relationship has of course come from Australian resources, which have helped fuel the modernisation and prosperity of today’s Chinese economy.
As an Australian, it’s impossible to visit a modern Chinese city and not feel a small sense of pride that our commodities have played a small part in what is really an extraordinary tale of economic success and human ingenuity.
Today, China accounts for 84 per cent of Australia’s iron ore exports and a quarter of all our trade.
And overall, trade accounts for almost half of Australia’s economy.
Perhaps most importantly, 1 in 4 Australian jobs depend on trade—and that means this, our largest trade relationship, will always be a source of deep value and opportunity.
But dollars and statistics only tell part of the story.
Behind that staggering growth are decades of work by businesspeople, diplomats and leaders who have pushed this partnership forward with vision and persistence.
And that work has manifested in many landmark achievements along the way, including the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement of 2015.
Of course, there have been challenges, too—and those challenges have been, and will always be, best managed by dialogue.
But dialogue also enables us to aspire to new opportunities.
And that’s exactly what this roundtable is about.
In just the last year since we last met in Perth, barriers to trade have lifted and travel flows are recovering.
What’s most exciting, however, is the opportunity to come.
Today’s agenda points to the breadth of that shared opportunity: education, smarter agriculture, the green economy and low-carbon transformation.
But that opportunity is underpinned by the personal connections that we, collectively and personally, have the privilege to establish, re-establish, confirm and enhance today.
And so, thank you all for being here, and I now pass back to Mr. Zhao to start our discussions.
Closing
Thank you all.
It’s now time to close this roundtable in preparation for our report back to our leaders, Premier Li Qiang and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
First and foremost, I again thank you for your reflections and insights on the opportunities before us.
What we’ve heard across the course of this roundtable has reinforced something important:
Our commercial relationship is not only strong: It’s dynamic, maturing, and rich with shared opportunity.
We’ve heard today of the great potential for more collaboration with respect to resources and the development of new, green technologies.
We’ve heard of what we can achieve with increased dialogue, regulatory consistency and cross-border engagement in our education, legal and financial services sectors.
We’ve heard of the importance of lifelong learning in supporting the aspirations of our people.
We’ve heard of the potential for collaborations in agricultural technologies to genuinely transform the ways in which we sustain our respective populations.
And we’ve heard of the importance of the ChAFTA framework, and of how there’s scope for it to be advanced.
But cooperation on paper and good intent is never enough.
If we’re serious about seizing the opportunity in front of us, we need the collective willpower to do so, and that’s what we seek to build here today.
This roundtable, of course, is a formal affair undertaken behind closed doors.
But its ramifications go far beyond those doors, far beyond this Great Hall, and across our nations.
Importantly, this roundtable sends a message to the businesses and to the people of our respective nations – clearly and unequivocally – that trade and partnership between our nations is not only welcomed, but something that should be encouraged, celebrated and – wherever possible – enhanced.
I now hand over to Mr. Zhao, for his closing remarks.