Foreign Minister Penny Wong will travel to Beijing to mark the 50th anniversary of Australia-China diplomatic relations.
Senator Wong has been invited by the Chinese government to meet with her counterpart Wang Yi and hold the sixth Australia-China Foreign and Strategic Dialogue which was last held in 2018.
It signals a step forward in diplomatic relations and follows a meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in November.
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Trade is expected to be high on the agenda, as Australia continues its push for China to remove billions of dollars in sanctions in place since 2020.
In a joint statement, Mr Albanese and Senator Wong recognised former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam's "bold" decision in 1972 to recognise the importance of engagement and co-operation between Australia and China.
"In the decades since, China has grown to become one of the world's largest economies and Australia's largest trading partner," the statement said.
"Australia seeks a stable relationship with China; we will co-operate where we can, disagree where we must and engage in the national interest."
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham has welcomed news of the ministerial talks.
"This opportunity ... provides a chance to try to seek and achieve progress against some of the difficult things in the relationship, such as China's unfair and unjustified trade sanctions against Australia," he told Sky News on Monday.
"It's appropriate that Australia and China mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations."
Senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute Malcolm Davis said China had reached out to Australia because the Chinese government realised previous diplomatic efforts had not been successful.
"The government in Beijing has realised that warrior diplomacy has been an absolute failure," he told Sky News.
"It's made more adversaries of China than it has won friends.
"They're trying to encourage Australia to talk again ... but we need to go into this with our eyes open."
Mr Davis said China was opting for a more gentle approach to diplomacy with Australia but would still look to pursue its broader aims.
"They're trying a more softly-softly approach," he said.
"They haven't given up on their ambitions, which is to essentially establish a hegemonic dominance in the region.
"What they're trying to do now is a more gentle approach to achieve that and it's more about winning friends than it is about bullying countries like Australia."
Senator Birmingham said the talks would also be an opportunity to raise the issue of detained Australians in China, such as journalist Cheng Lei.
He said news of the bilateral talks was a sign the relationship between the two countries was heading in the right direction.
"We don't expect everything is solved instantly but there is a reality to the fact that the government has benefited from China's decision to cease their counterproductive ban on ministerial-level dialogue," Senator Birmingham said.
"As we're seeing this settle into more of a pattern of discussion and dialogue, the test will be whether we see progress in the removal of those unfair trade sanctions."
Australian Associated Press
