On New Year's Eve, Chinese authorities announced a new set of limits on imported beef, presented as a way of protecting China's own beef producers. Beef sent to China above an allocated volume will be taxed at 55%. Australia is one of the exporting countries affected, and the announcement was not received well there.

The new rules apply from January 1 until the end of 2028, and they give each supplying country, Australia among them, a quota for every year of that period.

Earlier Chinese trade measures, imposed in 2020 as relations between the two countries worsened, were aimed at Australia in particular. The latest restrictions are not. Even so, Australia's beef industry quickly declared itself "extremely disappointed", and warnings of a "severe impact" were also heard. The Australian government spoke of "serious concerns", adding that Australia's standing as a country holding a free trade agreement with China ought to be "respected". The producers with most at stake are probably the smaller ones that built their business plans around selling into the Chinese market.

The episode is a further reminder that China is not always a dependable trading partner. The restrictions on imported beef also support a broader story about Chinese trade policy, one driven by self-sufficiency and by "mercantilism" — pushing exports up while holding imports down. Robin Harding, a journalist, has argued that China has no interest in buying anything from abroad, because it believes it can make everything itself more cheaply and to a higher standard. That account of China is too simple.

Most critics of China are based in the European Union and the United States, and the leading piece of evidence they put forward is a Chinese trade surplus of around a trillion dollars. Many of those critics pass over the fact that, measured against the size of its economy, China imports more than the United States does: 17.2% against 14.3%. Judged the same way, China's surplus is smaller than Taiwan's, South Korea's or Germany's. Washington and Brussels seldom accuse those three economies of shutting out foreign competitors, or of encouraging "over-capacity" at home, meaning more industrial capacity than demand requires.