China's harsh dealings with Australia look to be "unyielding" and relations between the two countries are not expected to improve anytime soon, a top US official has warned.
Kurt Campbell, President Joe Biden's Indo-Pacific coordinator, said he would have expected China to have eased its bold diplomacy after Mr Biden's inauguration but instead the superpower has ramped up its policy.
"I'm not sure that they have the strategic thinking to go back to a different kind of diplomacy towards Australia right now," Mr Campbell told an online seminar of the US Asia Society overnight.
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"I see a harshness in their approach that appears to be unyielding."
Mr Campbell said despite Canberra trying to improve relations with Beijing, Australians should be "settling in for the long haul" in regards of tensions with China.
"I see little yield, and if anything a rising sense of nationalism and a sense of aggrievement and a determination to continue to prosecute a very assertive case internationally across the board," he said.
Mr Campbell told former prime minister Kevin Rudd, now President of the Asia Society, China's trade sanctions on Australian exports were an attempt to split Australia from the US.
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Relations between Beijing and Canberra plummeted last year after Australia called for an international inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and introduced foreign interference legislation.
It triggered trade reprisals from China targeting Australian exports such as coal, barley, timber and seafood.
Souring relations between Canberra and Beijing have continued in recent months.
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