Canberra Liberals leader Alistair Coe has been meeting with local government officials of the Chinese Communist Party during a trip he says will help build greater personal relationships, despite Chief Minister Andrew Barr's own trips.
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Mr Coe, his deputy Nicole Lawder and Opposition MLA James Milligan are spending the week in China meeting with local government officials in Beijing, Fuzhou and Xiamen, on a trip aiming to build ties between the opposition and the Chinese government.
While Mr Barr has visited China, among several other nations, in recent years on trade delegations, an official opposition trip is unusual, given the Liberals cannot speak for the territory, and Mr Coe said it was entirely funded out of the members' own pockets.
It comes during a period of tense relations between Australia and China, amid concerns about the Asian nation's growing economic and political influence across the region. Mandarin was the second most-common language spoken at home in Canberra behind English in the 2016 Census.
Mr Coe said while issues such as the federal government's ban on Huawei building Australia's 5G network had been discussed, the vast majority of talks had centred on the wider trade ties, and that Chinese officials hoped the Huawei ban was "just a blip on the radar".
He said the trip was organised to help build more personal relationships between Canberra and China and promote Canberra as a business destination, despite Mr Barr leading official government delegations to China in recent years for similar purposes.
But Mr Coe said he did not want to use the China trip to discuss local politics, and he had also personally visited India since becoming opposition leader for similar purposes.
Mr Coe said all those travelling with the delegation, which includes some political advisors, footed the bills out of their own pockets, at an estimated $800 for flights and about $2000 total per person for the week.
On Tuesday Mr Coe met a vice chairman of the standing committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress, Zhang Qing, an arm of the local government in Beijing, which has a sister-city relationship with Canberra.
Mr Coe said he believed there was also "a clear desire for closer ties" after the Liberals were the first international group to be officially received by the Congress at a new People's Congress building in Tongzhuo province.
But he said the Chinese embassy in Canberra had provided help to the Liberals in organising the trip and securing meetings with key local officials in Beijing, and Fuzhuo and Xiamen in Fujian province.
The delegation will also meet the Fujian Provincial Government and the Xiamen Municipal Government, the Xiamen Airlines headquarters; Xiamen University, which has ties to Canberra universities, as well as a school and a hospital.
Despite Mr Coe saying the trip would help build new trade ties, no-one from the Liberals were meeting with any business leaders or firms that the party was aware had with business before the territory government.
