Aluminum Corporation of China executives are becoming increasingly familiar with the lobbying of politicians in Australia. The group’s senior management was in Sydney on Monday to talk about its audacious purchase of 9 per cent of Rio Tinto, but company executives have also spent much of the past year negotiating a $2.4bn project to develop a bauxite mine in northern Queensland.

Chinalco, as the group is known, is one of a new breed of Chinese state-owned companies that suddenly have power and cash, but little overseas experience.