But the Albanese government’s China strategy of combining softer rhetoric with a policy of no compromises is yet to face its greatest tests.

Both internationally and domestically, powerful forces will leave the Australia-China relationship perpetually exposed to ferocious flare-ups.

Despite recent smiles for the camera between presidents Xi and Joe Biden, the US-China relationship remains riven by deep-seated mutual suspicion.

With watershed US export controls introduced last month to starve Chinese tech companies of leading-edge semiconductors, manufacturing equipment, and expertise, Washington has embraced technological and economic containment.

China already saw the United States as a waning superpower intent on holding back its rise. These grim assessments will only harden in Beijing.

For years, China has sought to wind back US power and prestige globally and build a world-class military capable of prevailing against any adversary.

With tough policies now bipartisan consensus in Washington, the Chinese government will redouble these efforts.

As a trading nation with huge export exposure to China and deep and abiding military and diplomatic ties to the United States, Australia will be squeezed by these increasingly competitive dynamics in the US-China relationship.

On everything from growing US military presence on our shores to collaboration with the United States on nuclear-powered submarines, China is likely to see Australia as a proxy for US power in its near region.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Australia should distance itself from the United States. But it does mean that ties between Canberra and Beijing will be continuously strained by China’s deepening suspicion that Australia has been co-opted as a tool in US containment efforts.

Beyond these gloomy international dynamics, the Australian government faces a series of tough China policy choices of its own that could easily eviscerate what little trust might have been built between Prime Minister Albanese and President Xi.

In the Albanese government’s in-tray are high stakes questions like whether Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong should use powers under the Foreign Relations Act to effectively veto Confucius Institutes at Australian universities.

There’s also the promised review of the 99-year lease by the Chinese company Landbridge of Darwin Port and the prospect that Canberra will use its Magnitsky legislation to level targeted travel and financial sanctions against Chinese officials implicated in severe human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

On top of this, there’s also the ever-present prospect of a large Chinese investment being rejected by either the Australian Treasurer or the Foreign Investment Review Board.

If any of these decisions don’t go China’s way, Beijing could easily decide to shove Canberra back in the diplomatic freezer and throw down the hammer on even more Australian exports.

These very real risks don’t mean that Canberra should hold back from making tough China policy decisions.

But while these decisions might be justifiable for a range of national security and domestic political reasons, they could also easily rupture the slowly repairing Australia-China relationship.

In the wake of the Albanese-Xi meeting, the mood between Canberra and Beijing continues to warm. And yet more storms are brewing at home and abroad.

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With pointy China policy dilemmas confronting Canberra and US-China relations locked in a precipitous downward spiral, tough times await Prime Minister Albanese and his colleagues as they manage President Xi and his emissaries.

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Benjamin Herscovitch is a Research Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University.