DPC travel outcomes report: Jacinta Allan's 2025 travel to the People's Republic of China

Travel details

Expenses

Includes combined expenses for Minister and accompanying travellers.

Purpose of travel

From 14-20 September 2025, I undertook official travel to China, visiting five cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu, and Deyang.

I travelled to promote closer education, trade, investment, tourism, and people-to-people ties with Victoria’s largest two-way trading partner and number one source of international visitors.

This trip also provided an opportunity to launch Victoria’s China Strategy: For a New Golden Era with key organisations and stakeholders in-country, helping to immediately kickstart Victoria’s new framework for engagement with China for the next five years.

Benefits of travel to the State of Victoria

This trip was my first official visit to China as Premier of Victoria. My program primarily consisted of meetings with industry and government stakeholders to renew Victoria’s longstanding friendship with China.

In Beijing, I launched the new five-year Victoria’s China Strategy: For a New Golden Era, which seeks to position Victoria as a national leader for engagement with China and a destination of choice to visit, learn, innovate, and invest; and centres community ties as a core tenet of the Victoria-China relationship.

Benefits of this trip to Victoria were in line with the key objectives of the Strategy, including:

• Supporting government, industry, and community to direct effort towards outward economic engagement with China that drives economic growth. This included:
  • Meeting with the Governor of Jiangsu to support Victoria’s oldest sister-state relationship.
  • Meeting with the Party Secretary of Sichuan to support sister-state ties ahead of the 10th anniversary of that relationship in 2026.
  • Launch of the Direct From Victoria e-commerce campaign with Dingdong Fresh, a major Chinese grocery home delivery app, to promote Victorian produce to Chinese consumers.
  • Re-opening of Vic House in Shanghai as a dynamic inmarket showroom and trade promotion facility to strengthen economic collaboration by highlighting Victorian exports, and providing a platform to facilitate Victorian businesses’ engagement with key distributors and stakeholders in China.
  • Meeting with Chengdu restauranteurs and distributors in Victoria’s sister-state of Sichuan to promote Victoria’s premium red meat and other agricultural products.
  • Witnessing a new MoU between Assemco (Victoria) and KN (China) to enable more components of Melbourne’s new G Class trams to be built in Victoria.
  • Announcing the order of four new Tunnel Boring Machines from the China Railway Engineering Equipment Group (CREG) for the Suburban Rail Loop.
• Strengthening Victoria’s reputation as a global destination for Chinese visitors, students, researchers, and investors. This included:
  • Witnessing the signing of a new Education Working Group Memorandum of Understanding with China’s Ministry of Education, which will establish an annual forum for direct education cooperation with China’s national ministry.
  • Launching Visit Victoria’s new ‘Every Bit Different’ tourism campaign in China, including an additional $43 million investment boost to Visit Victoria.
  • Meeting with the Chairman of Sichuan Airlines to promote ongoing direct flights between Melbourne and Chengdu.
  • Announcing that RMIT University and the Shanghai University of International Business and Economics have commenced the formal process to form a Joint Institute, which will elevate their longstanding partnership and deliver more high-quality Australian-accredited programs for students in Shanghai.
  • Witnessing signing of five new MoUs between Victorian and Chinese universities and TAFEs to promote institutional partnerships in the higher, vocational, and international education sectors.
  • Announcement of Trina Solar’s $453 million Battery Energy Storage System project in the Kiewa Valley, which will install 500MW of battery capacity and create jobs.
• Elevating connections with Victoria’s Chinese community to amplify the State’s multicultural identity, enrich lives of all Victorians, and unlock new avenues for collaboration with China. This included:
  • Announcing the Hamer Regional Scholarships Program alongside the Strategy, providing opportunities for Victorian tertiary students living in, studying in or from regional Victoria to immerse themselves in Chinese language and culture, and creating the people-to-people ties across all of Victoria and China needed for future success.
  • Announcing a new MoU between Museums Victoria and Chengdu Museum to promote ongoing cultural exchange.

Next Steps/Follow Up

Specific next steps following my visit include:

• Establishing the Hamer Regional Scholarships Program
• Operationalising the Education Working Group with China’s Ministry of Education
• Delivering trade activations at Vic House following its reopening in Shanghai, to support Victorian exporters’ reach in China
• Delivering a program of activities in 2026 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Victoria-Sichuan sister-state partnership

An implementation plan for Victoria’s China Strategy: For a New Golden Era will be developed to leverage outcomes achieved during my travel and guide delivery of ongoing activity under the Strategy.

Committed actions under the Strategy