(Bloomberg) -- The China-U.S. summit this week yielded results that benefited the West's partners in Asia, according to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who was also critical of how Canberra has handled ties with Beijing.
“The partial stabilization of U.S.-China relations coming out of the recent summit between Xi Jinping and President Biden is on balance good news for the wider region because it takes the geopolitical temperature down a notch or two,” Rudd said in an interview Friday at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.
“That actually creates more political space for other bilateral relationships -- either with Japan and China, the Republic of Korea and China, Australia and China -- to enter I would hope into a less fractious period.”
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Rudd said the summit had resulted in a “tactical pause” in tensions between Beijing and Washington but that “strategically we still face a very rough competitive period.”
Rudd, who also served as Australia's foreign minister and is CEO of the Asia Society think tank, was critical of how the current Australian government has handled ties with with China as it has grown stronger and played a bigger role on the global stage under Xi's leadership.
“Sometimes when China has been excessively assertive, the Australian government often responds rhetorically to cater to its own domestic political constituency as opposed to pursing what I would describe as a rational, long-term, hard-edged, hard-nosed bilateral strategy toward China,” he said.
The New Economy Forum is being organized by Bloomberg Media Group, a division of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
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