China and Australia can enhance their leadership roles and their relationship, especially in Africa

November 2014 is summit season, with Beijing's hosting of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders from Nov 5 to 11 being followed closely by the Group of 20 Leaders' Summit in Brisbane, Australia, over two days starting Nov 15. Summits are good for national egos and offer world leaders a chance to take interact with their counterparts.

Using their policymaking potential is more difficult. But an unusual inverse commonality of this year's APEC and G20 hosts, alongside their close mutual economic ties, might present an additional perspective that can enhance international economic collaboration going forward.

Both summits feature heavy hitters. Leaders of Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea and the United States are members of both, while New Zealand and Singapore will both also attend this year, as APEC members and one-off G20 guests of Australia.

As host of the season's first meeting, China is no less than the world's largest rising economic and industrial superpower. G20 host Australia, stands as the only major industrialized economy to have, so far at least, sailed smoothly through the global financial crisis and its lingering aftermath - in good part thanks to China's demand for its natural resources. China and Australia indeed share a deep economic relationship. More than a quarter of Australia's exports are to China, while Australia in 2013 was second favorite to the US as a destination for China's outbound investment.

Arguably more interestingly, the two 2014 host countries share a perversely inverse political economic geography. That is, where China lies in the Northern Hemisphere and sees itself as the economic power of the developing "South", Australia lies in the Southern Hemisphere and is a developed country of the "North". Looking further however, China was not only once and for most of economic history the world's largest economy, its economic structure lies ahead of its GDP per capita in rapidly converging with that of a more advanced "Northern" economy. It is accordingly and already home to some of the world's largest and increasingly innovative telecommunications and e-commerce giants, such as Huawei, Lenovo and Alibaba to name but a few. Australia's economy, especially its exports profile, is more reflective of its land-vast population-sparse Southern Hemisphere type. Combined with its high-income recent history Australia is home to the world's largest mining companies, including BHP and Rio Tinto.

As much as the two countries have benefited from their symbiotic and often complementary relationship, more could be made of this inversion. A resource-rich island-continent Australia has, since the 19th century, historically "ridden the sheep's back" to wealth, via exports of wool as well as agricultural and mineral commodities. It has however made little of its potential to be a Southern economic role model, economic "rock star". So much so that in 2012, former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard cancelled her uptake of a rare political invitation - to speak as the only non-African leader at an African Union leaders gathering. Unfortunately the timing coincided with important educational and climate change discussions. The chance to mingle with some four-dozen heads of state and share some lessons from Australia's high-income resource-wealth story was sadly missed a result.

Recently Australia's Indian Ocean-facing resource-rich state of Western Australia, however, is following China's lead and resources-sector interests by promoting its own ties with Africa's east. An agreement signed early this year by Western Australia Premier Colin Barnet committed his state to enhanced knowledge and technology sharing with the 19 member countries of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa in mining, petroleum and agriculture. The 19 member states include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Western Australia is well equipped to play this role - it is the country's richest per capita, and its world-class mining and agriculture has developed over more than a century.

The timing for that collaboration is good, if showing some signs of commodity price vulnerability. African economies, especially those rich in resources, are on average growing faster than most economies elsewhere. Africa's demographic growth rates are similarly among the highest in the world. The chance for African economics to collaborate with Australia, directly and indirectly, is large - and at the heart of the type of economic development and stabilization that APEC and G20-type summits seek to foster. Similarly, China is the largest trading partner of both continents and an increasingly important investment partner. It is a common denominator to the modern growth story of both.

Trilateral economic opportunities are emerging. The signing of an agreement in May between the government of Guinea; the International Finance Corp, the World Bank's private sector lending arm; and Anglo-Australian and Chinese mining giants Rio Tinto and Chinalco to unlock the vast iron ore and bauxite reserves of Guinea's remote Simandou mine is a case in point. Thanks to new growth, relative political stability and rising confidence within Africa, the Africa growth story may evolve such that Simandou's minerals will be used over coming decades to build Africa's own infrastructure instead of being be shipped all the way to Asia.

On the frontier of South-South collaboration and of the pushing of geopolitical boundaries, China, in the Northern Hemisphere, has invited the other giant of the northern hemisphere with "southern" features, India, to the APEC forum. Australia would have been bold indeed to consider an invitation to the current African Union chairman and president of Benin, Thomas Yayi Boni, to the G20 Summit in place of New Zealand or Singapore. In a twist of irony, it happens that President Boni's signature was one of two on the rejected invitation to Julia Gillard of 2012 to attend the African Union heads of state gathering.

As one of the highest-ranked countries of the UN's Human Development Index, and a successful Southern Hemisphere resource-rich economy, Australia offers a role model for what many African economies can become. Having recently extended its long-standing Colombo scholarship plan funding students from across Asia to study in Australia to become a bilateral flow program that also sends Australians to study in Asia, Australia may consider in future sending Australians to selective schools in Africa to learn African studies and languages spoken on the continent, including Swahili, Amaric, or even French or Portuguese in Africa, and other subjects of interest. Increasing the bilateral flow of students between Africa and Australia, even if vastly smaller than the flow of students between Asia and Australia, pre-empts increased mining and other economic ties between Australia and Africa, and would evolve bilateral ties and understanding, as well as direct and indirect learning opportunities.

As Australia and China prepare to play a double act as 2014 hosts of two of the most important forums of global governance, the awareness of their roles and willingness to work together and also their independent economic ties with Africa could be an important example for the world.

As Professor Ian Goldin of Oxford University recently put it: "It is not surprising that ordinary citizens feel uncertain about the future and frustrated with their governments, which have so far failed to protect them from globalization's fallout. As the world economy adapts to new normals of growth, in rates and locations, system risks also shift.

"But wresting power back from regional and international institutions - however shadowy and distant they may seem - would only compound the problem, for it would reduce the ability to guide the supranational trends that are shaping the world's future. More, not less, cooperation is necessary to manage growing complexity and integration," says Goldin.

Through their roles as hosts of major international economic forums this month, and their respective if differently scaled - competing and complementary - interests in Africa, China and Australia embed their capacity to serve as developed and developing country role models for such countries, as well as for their economic partners, into the global agenda.

The author is a Beijing-based academic who holds a doctorate in economics from Peking University, and specializes in China-Africa affairs. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily European Weekly 11/07/2014 page13)