China’s state media has described its latest move against Australian wine makers as a “destructive blow” that could see prices triple and shoppers ditch Aussie products in a new article overnight.
It comes after Trade Minister Simon Birmingham slammed China over its “false” claims regarding the Australian wine industry in some of his harshest words against Beijing yet, saying he will continue to “call out” China’s bad behaviour.
Chinese state mouthpiece, The Global Times spoke to an importer of Australian wine who claimed “he has started to explore wine from other countries, including Chile, and he expects the demand for Australian wine to crater.”
“Chinese customers chose Australian wines mostly because of the price advantage compared with other countries’ wines, and I expect the volume imported Australia will drop sharply,” Long Guanyu, the general manager of a wine importer based in Xiamen, told the Global Times.
China has implemented tough measures on Australia, with the BBC describing some of Birmingham’s comments as his “strongest yet” against Xi Jinping.
Mr Birmingham warned this week the world is watching as China bans more Aussie products.
“Australia is not the only country that has seen these types of punitive measures and I expect the rest of the world will be watching quite closely what is happening in Australia,” he said.
The European Council on Foreign Relations said China’s recent actions against Australia “show how far it is already willing to go on economic coercion”.
Recently, China – which is Australia’s number one trading partner – slapped Australian wine makers with even more tariffs than the original 107-212 per cent rise it hit producers with last month.
China’s Commerce Ministry said it would implement temporary anti-subsidy tariffs on imported Australian wines of an additional 6.3 per cent to 6.4 per cent, concluding “Australian subsidies have caused substantial damage to China’s domestic wine industry”.
