Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday that "dialogue" must be at the heart of ties between Canberra and Beijing as he met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Albanese is on his second visit to China as prime minister, seeking to bolster recently stabilized trade ties even as geopolitical tensions remain high.

Relations between Beijing and Canberra have charted a bumpy course over the past decade, a period marked by repeated disagreements over national security and competing interests across the vast Indo-Pacific region.