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CANBERRA — Australia is on the kind of diplomatic tear Canada can only dream of. Brisbane got lots of global attention by hosting the Group of 20 leaders summit in Brisbane last weekend because so many participants lined up behind Canada’s Stephen Harper to disparage Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Kremlin’s malignant actions in Ukraine.
Less than 24 hours later in Canberra, the Australian capital, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott signed China’s biggest trade deal ever. Mr. Abbott followed that triumph by announcing a strategic security alliance with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and, perhaps rashly, promised another trade deal could be expected by the end of 2015.
As Australia’s daily Financial Review crowed, “Simultaneous visits by Xi and Modi mark us as no longer an appendix to Asia, but as a core Indo-Pacific power.”
The optics must have looked good to the 2.6 billion people back home in China and India, too. The two leaders were accorded rapturous welcomes when they addressed Australia’s parliament on consecutive days.
Mr. Xi talked about how it was best to achieve peace through trade. Mr. Modi spoke of the bonds that Indians and Australians share. Both countries are democracies, he said, and their citizens love cricket.
Neither mentioned climate change, which is a sore spot with Mr. Abbott, particularly after he was hectored as being a laggard on the subject by U.S. President Barack Obama during the Brisbane gathering.
Mr. Modi repeated last month’s superstar turn in New York, drawing a crowd of 20,000 enthralled Indo-Australians to a Bollywoodesque rally at an arena in Sydney. The Hindu nationalist then spent an evening in Melbourne with Australia’s business elite, where he kicked open “closed-door” protectionist policies that have endured since India’s beginnings in 1947 by urging his hosts to invest billions of dollars in his country.
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