CANBERRA: Chinese business leaders have ranked Australia as the most attractive place to do business out of a group of large economies and are twice as likely to want to holiday in Sydney, Melbourne or the outback as New York, Los Angeles or Chicago.
The first opinion poll of business decision-maker attitudes towards Australia finds they hold the country in higher regard than the United States, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and Russia, but slightly less favorably than Germany and Canada.
While there is a generally high regard for Australia for business, tourism and education, there are some contradictions when it comes to strategic issues. Australia is seen as an alliance partner by 44 per cent of those surveyed but only as a close ally by 17 per cent.
The poll, conducted for the University of Technology Sydney’s Australia China Relations Institute by Zogby Research in February, came before the crackdown on Chinese property investment but after a year of mixed economic and political relations between the two countries.
