Of course President Hu Jintao visited Australia well before his becoming China’s current President, as a special guest of the Australian Government. But what we have seen this year with the new Chinese leadership is on a different level. It is an initiative of the Chinese as well as the Australian side, and serves both countries’ mutual strategic purposes.

Mr Xi has political pedigree and personal charisma. He is a so called ‘princeling’ who has a reputation for commitment to openness, reform, and market-based development. His association with the Shanghai faction within the CPP does not mean that he is ideologically conservative. He has served as governor of get-up-and-go coastal provinces, including Zhejiang which boasts the highest proportion of private enterprise in the country. He is also, of course, the product of a political system significantly different from that of Australia and other industrial democracies with which he is energetically engaging on his way to the top job. But the Chinese system has changed very much in the last thirty years.

Mr Xi’s visit provides a strategic opportunity for both countries to learn much more about each other’s political systems and leadership, how those changes are shaping the Chinese political system and the Chinese political leadership and how Australia, a major partner and industrial democracy, can forge a way forward on narrowing political system differences.. This is one of the most important challenges in China’s dealings with the world in our lifetime, one that will require deep political commitment and respect all round.

This week Dominic Delany analyses the political context of Mr Xi’s rise to power. He observes that Xi Jinping’s progression through the Chinese political system demonstrates that China is neither monolithic nor simply authoritarian. Although fealty to CCP rule is important, promotion through the ranks in Chinese politics is driven by a dynamic mix of merit, factionalism, and experience. China’s political system is evolving rapidly but remains on a stable course; it is increasingly contestable; and its policy outcomes have a large measure of predictability if the care is taken to analyse it and engage with it. This is a key message for the international community and for Australia. There is much at stake in learning about the political changes taking place and engaging closely with those who have the responsibility of managing them in China.

Mr Xi’s visit to Australia and his visits elsewhere are a measure of the huge increase in priority and attention that China’s leaders are according to the interaction of their country with the international community. This is a significant and most welcome development.