WORLD COMMENTARY
China and Australia are the personification of the odd couple. In almost every way, they offer contrasts rather than commonalities - in culture, history, population size and structure, political systems.
And yet â€¦ their economies have proven highly complementary. Not only is China Australia's top trading partner, but Australia is China's sixth source of imports.
China has often chosen in recent decades, since it began its "opening and reform" era under Deng Xiaoping, to use Australia as a safe and sound testing-ground for its economic engagement with the world. 
So the concept of a "high-level dialogue" between the countries is not as lopsided or strange as might once have seemed.
Last Friday, the second of these annual dialogues - upgrading previous conversations - took place in Admiralty House, the magnificent Sydney residence of governors-general.
The Australian side included Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, the head of her department, Peter Varghese, and her opposition counterpart, Tanya Plibersek, Seven Group chairman Kerry Stokes, ANZ chief executive Mike Smith, Queensland University vice-chancellor Peter Hoj, ambassador-designate to China Jan Adams - who led the negotiations that achieved the "trade trifecta" with China, Japan and South Korea - and Future Fund chairman Peter Costello, the co-chairman of the dialogue.
The Chinese side's co-chairman was former foreign minister Li Zhaoxing, and also included Assistant Commerce Minister Tong Daochi, Bo'ao Forum head Zhou Wenzhong, ambassador to Australia Ma Zhaoxu, air force general and member of the foreign affairs committee of China's parliament Chen Xiaogong, Baosteeel chairman Dai Zhihao, Citic executive director Zhang Jijing, the international general manager of China National Offshore Oil Corp, Zhu Yiran, and former China Daily editor-in-chief Zhu Yinghang.
Such meetings have been held before. They don't decide anything. But their tone and their dynamic are strong indicators of the way in which this relationship - crucial for Australia, and by no means unimportant for China - are heading.
Most previous dialogues have been polite but cagey, with only modest inclination - especially from the Chinese side - to contribute in unprogrammed ways to the conversation beyond set-piece statements. That's changed. The Chinese participants felt sufficiently relaxed - following the conclusion of the free-trade agreement and the successful visit of President Xi Jinping a year ago - to speak confidently and spontaneously, and even to disagree to a modest degree with each other.
The co-moderators, Costello and Li, agreed this was "the best ever" such encounter. It was a telling sign of the growing cultural interplay that Li was able, during a meeting break, to locate a nearby Chinese medicine practitioner and to return refreshed.
Ma says the relationship is in the best shape ever - while still leaving room to intensify.
"Since the mining boom," he said, "we now have three other booms - an agricultural boom, an infrastructure boom and a services boom." The discussion about China's controversial role in the South China Sea was robust, serious, inevitably unresolved but, importantly, frank.
The fact that it took place underlined the way the relationship is stepping up. Varghese said it was important to maximise the opportunities and minimise the strategic risks during the "profound transition in the region, as economic weight is redistributing strategic weight" - and as political systems are struggling to handle such fundamental changes.
China has played a prominent role in the shift towards a true Pacific-wide free trade zone, especially via APEC. "Our hope," said Varghese, "is that China and other large economies in Asia would be able to join the TPP over time and thereby strengthen its scope." He is less optimistic about progress on the strategic side of the transition.
It is important, he said, to develop regional institutions based on international law and global norms, rather than on power alone.
The South China Sea issue provides a test case of this proposition, with Australia focusing on how the issue is managed, which goes to the stability of the region.
It was inevitable that it should have become a strong topic at last Friday's dialogue.
Varghese envisaged China and Australia working together on reforming global governance - with China taking an appropriately enhanced role in institutions such as the IMF, with the creation of new bodies such as the G20 that are more reflective of today's distribution of global power, and with new regional institutions such as the AIIB being created that incorporate "the highest levels of governance and transparency".
As a major power, he said: "China could choose to provide strategic reassurance to the region that its rise would be peaceful and respectful of international norms and rules, or it could adopt a might-is-right approach. We all want China to succeed, and hope that it will make the right choice."A message underlining the value of such dialogues.