Australia s relationship with China is doomed , warns a Beijing academic who predicts an air of suspicion and scrutiny is set to dominate the year ahead. The origins of COVID-19. Discredited territorial claims. Economic coercion. Cyber espionage. Influence operations. Respect for international law. With both sides unlikely to back down in any of the above areas and shrinking policy space among megaphone diplomacy and unwise messaging, it is getting increasingly unrealistic to imagine a reset, a Beijing-based international affairs analyst has declared. Professor James Laurenceson of the University of Technology Sydney s Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) agrees. There s little reason to be optimistic that a sudden, positive turnaround will be seen in 2021, he argues.