Australia

China is indeed our largest trading partner but the Australian approach is a bit more nuanced. Previous experience has taught that China will try to control if they perceive weakness. We had a trade "dispute" (deliberate chinese sanctions) because they objected to Oz politicians discussing the source of covid. We diversified. But we didnt roll over.

There is a current conflict between the fact we have heavily aligned with the US post WW2 and them going fascist while the majority of our markets are in Asia.

We cannot simply kowtow to China, it straight up doesnt work and isnt respected. But we can no longer rely on the US as an ally and need to strengthen our ties locally.

I'm hopeful that Japanese & Korean defence overtures with Europe, and European ties with Canada & UK will draw together a "free world" defence alliance against the fascists and dictators.

Here's hoping its only a cold war.

Nope. For many reasons, getting with China means certain vassal State.

For instance, Australia's current stance is that its only arguable whether Australia is a vassal Sate with the USA. Its definitely a close relationship, but on balance i think it comes out more a major-minor partnership, at least in this and since WW2's strategic moment.

So stripping out cultural alignments, for only a second, it comes to a question of whether status-quo economic relationship is more valuable to the senior partner (Aus-China), than a strategic partnership to the senior partner (Aus -USA).

This makes it really easy, in an economic relationship you can get by with slaves in a worst case scenario, on the other hand you always need a certain goodwill from the minor country people to have near alignment with the major partner's goals.

Putting the cultural alignments back in and it makes it difficult to see a closer alignment with China in the near future for Australia. Interestingly, i think the more culturally diverse we get the more we will in fact align with a country like the USA, not this fascist populism that has overtaken everything at the moment, but the general direction.

The theory that tying economies together stops war is just a theory, and i don't think with a huge amount of evidence. I mean USA and USSR never went directly to war, and they had very limited trade. France and Germanic peoples went to war plenty, lots of trade reliance.

Portugal and England being famous allies, largely to their interlocking trade balances, among other geopolitical traits, might send this little argument down the toilet though, so maybe be a trade relationship ends up pretty net-net in the calculus for war.

Edit: Maybe it comes down to the reliance of the country on the type of traded good. Does its trade ceasing damage the importing country ina material way?

This has nothing to do with the economy in the first place, but it is a good point to reduce dependencies.