Cute and cuddly pandas might have dominated the headlines when the Chinese Premier visited South Australia, but the only other state Li Qiang is visiting has bigger ambitions.
"I'll take economic-boosting direct flights between Shanghai and Perth any day over pandas," WA Premier Roger Cook told reporters with a chuckle on Monday.
Boosting the state's economy, and therefore the nation's, is the name of the game for Cook.
But it's not about flights or pandas or even lifting trade impediments on rock lobster (an issue hinted at by featuring the crustacean at a community banquet).
It's about what was packed in the rows and rows of white bags which greeted Premier Li in the industrial hub of Kwinana south of Perth — lithium, as well as other critical minerals.
The hope is those minerals will deliver the next boom for Western Australia, replicating the success which has flowed from the iron ore buried beneath the state's unforgiving and expansive surface.
Last year, WA received about $8 billion in royalties from iron ore exports to China — accounting for about a fifth of the state government's bottom line.
But as China's construction ambitions temper, the focus is shifting to resources like lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and other minerals — which WA has in spades — and which are needed for everything from electric vehicle batteries and smartphones to wind turbines.
We dig them out, China processes
Luckily, it's got a captive buyer in China, according to national president of the Australia-China Business Council, David Olsson.
"China's going through an economic process of decarbonisation of its own economy," he told the ABC's AM program.
"It's a major driver of much of its economic growth going forward, and the development of value chains and supply chains associated with the decarbonisation of the economy.
"Australia is blessed with large deposits of these critical minerals, which is essential to the green economy, so China will be looking to shore up its supply chains so that it gets as much access as it is able to."
That's where the tension lies for Australia which, on the one hand, stands to benefit significantly from building new trading relationships with China around these new minerals.
But given their importance to so much of our daily lives — not to mention military uses — national security considerations are quickly coming into play.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong alluded to that tension on the weekend, speaking about the government generally welcoming foreign investment.
"We have also said there will be areas where we'll pay particular attention to national interest considerations. Critical minerals is one of them," she told Insiders.
The concern is what the head of the Perth US-Asia Centre, Gordon Flake, is China's "extreme" monopoly over the processing of the minerals.
We can dig them out of the ground here in Australia, but being able to use them currently requires China's involvement.
"This is the basic economics 101, trying to avoid monopolies, and we're pretty close to a monopoly right now," Flake told AM.
"There isn't a call for the government to take over the industry, but to at least carve out a percentage of that supply chain so as to deny China the capability of monopoly behaviour.
"To ensure that at least for national security applications, for core communications applications, that we are not dependent on a single source, but that's a big, big lift."
It's why there was $7.1 billion for critical minerals in the latest federal budget, on top of other measures.
But money alone won't be enough, with China the home of much of the necessary expertise, which mining analyst Peter Strachan said means processing projects were taking longer-than-expected to get up to capacity.
"The problem in this area is that prices have been really controlled by the Chinese because they can push the price down and just make Australian developments uneconomical until such a time as they're sort of bleeding from every orifice," he told the ABC's AM program.
"And then they have to come to the Chinese to get support and get into the market."
'Very delicate dance'
Flake agreed, saying there was only one commercial-scale rare earths processing facility outside of China.
Despite the theoretical power that enabled the country to wield, he believes lessons have been learnt from trying to exert power over Japan in similar circ*mstances.
"Because if they threaten that, we'll do the one thing they don't want which is encourage governments and other companies to invest in alternatives, and so it's a very delicate dance on their part," he said.
The solution, he believes, is for governments and the private sector to use every lever they have to get other processing plants off the ground — using offtake agreements and government investment.
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"And most importantly it's going to take international cooperation because this is not an issue Australia can solve," Flake said.
It's a high-stakes dance both the state and federal governments will need to work their way through over the months and years ahead.
Sticking with pandas might be easier, but the pay-offs are big if both sides take the right steps together.
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