Belligerent Chinese Ambassador packs up and goes home after overseeing the unravelling of Australia's relationship with Beijing - here's every time he stirred up trouble
- Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye is leaving his post after five years in the job
- During his controversial tenure he oversaw the unravelling of diplomatic ties
- He threatened Australia's consumer and tourism sectors in wake of Covid crisis
- During his farewell letter he also took a subtle swipe at Australia over tensions
China's top man in Canberra is leaving his post after overseeing the spectacular collapse of diplomatic relations between Australia and Beijing.
The Chinese Embassy confirmed on Thursday that Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye will be leaving the role with his five-year tour of duty now complete.
The belligerent diplomat's time Down Under began when goodwill and cooperation between Australia and China was strong but by the end of his tenure hostilities have soared.
Mr Cheng took yet another subtle swipe at Australia in his farewell statement, blaming us for the political tensions and taking no responsibility for the them.
'The current difficult situation facing China-Australia relations is saddening,' he said.

The Chinese Embassy confirmed on Thursday that Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye (pictured) will be leaving the role with his five-year tour of duty now complete
'It is hoped that the Australian side will work in the same direction with the Chinese side, on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, to overcome the difficulties and make joint efforts to push the bilateral relations back to the right track as soon as possible.'
When the coronavirus pandemic began back in April last year, Mr Cheng foreshadowed the introduction of crippling tariffs on various export sectors and threatened a boycott of Chinese tourists to Australia.
His malicious comments came after Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government called for an independent international inquiry into the origins of the pandemic.
Mr Morrison's call followed reports Beijing made numerous attempts to cover-up the crisis by silencing whistleblowers.
Australia's call for transparency infuriated Beijing and Mr Jingye was called upon by his Communist Party bosses to go on the attack.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic back in April last year, Mr Cheng made threats against Australia's wine sector which now has 200 percent export tariffs
'The Chinese public is frustrated, dismayed and disappointed with what Australia is doing now,' he told the Australian Financial Review at the time.
'I think in the long term... if the mood is going from bad to worse, people would think 'Why should we go to such a country that is not so friendly to China? The tourists may have second thoughts.
'The parents of the students would also think whether this place which they found is not so friendly, even hostile, whether this is the best place to send their kids here.
'It is up to the people to decide. Maybe the ordinary people will say "why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?"'
In the months that followed, Beijing imposed $20 billion worth of arbitrary tariffs and bans on a raft of key Australian exports including barely, wine, beef, seafood, coal, cotton, timber, and copper.
Mr Cheng in April this year also made headlines for an awkward media conference where he spouted Communist Party propaganda for two hours, denying China's Uyghur population were being oppressed and imprisoned in re-education camps.
He warned Australia to stop meddling in China's internal affairs and demanded an end to criticism of Beijing's human rights abuses calling the accusations 'Western lies' and 'fabrications' of 'anti-China forces'.
In November, there was even more controversy when the Chinese Embassy released a bizarre list of 14 grievances it had with Australia.
But Australia-China Relations Institute director Professor James Laurenceson, told Daily Mail Australia there's little sense in assigning blame to him personally for the deterioration in relations.
'No previous Chinese ambassador has had a tougher job in trying to navigate a course between a harder line being pushed back home and a frequently hostile environment in Australia,' he said.
'How much that harder line being pushed back home can be attributed to advice by the Chinese embassy we'll never know. But I suspect it was being driven by much bigger forces.
'A few moves by the Chinese embassy, such as the release of the 14 grievances last year, have been difficult to understand in terms of what they were trying to achieve.
'In the end they were seized on by China hawks to attack Beijing.'

'I think in the long term... if the mood is going from bad to worse, people would think 'Why should we go to such a country that is not so friendly to China? The tourists may have second thoughts,' Mr Cheng said after Australia called for an inquiry into the Covid pandemic
Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute, said Mr Cheng, who arrived Down Under in 2016, was not a 'not a natural wolf warrior' diplomat.
'He's very much of the Foreign Ministry bureaucracy and I think his time here pretty much reflected that,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
'Once he had to get his hands dirty and issue veiled threats to Australia about the cost of crossing China he was willing to do it. But he was not a natural to that role which a lot of the new breed in the Foreign Ministry are.'
Mr Cheng in his farewell statement emphasized that sound and stable China-Australia relations serve the fundamental interests of both countries and both peoples.
'People from all circles affirm the importance of Australia-China relations, look forward to the improvement of the bilateral relations and are committed to playing constructive roles in this regard,' he said.
Prof Laurenceson said whoever replaces Mr Cheng was unlikely to have any impact when it came to patching things up between the two feuding nations.
'I don't expect a new ambassador to be able to decisively shift the state of bilateral relations,' he said.
'As long as political leaders in Canberra and Beijing are unwilling or unable to settle on a new understanding of how some minimal level of mutual trust can be re-established and how constructive cooperation can again proceed.'

Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute Professor James Laurenceson, told Daily Mail Australia there's little sense in assigning blame to Mr cheng personally for the deterioration in relations
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