SYDNEY, Feb 5 Reuters For Australia, China has become the Golden Goose that39;s always about to stop laying.

For more than three decades now, barely a year has passed where a China crisis was not just around the corner, certain to shut down the rivers of gold flowing into Australia39;s trade coffers.

The latest scares have come in the form of a collapse in China39;s stock markets and a failure of developer China Evergrande and what it might mean for the property sector, a backbone of China39;s economy.

That should be bad news for Australia given the sector is a major user of steel and thus iron ore, the country39;s single biggest export earner.

Yet while China plays an outsized role, David Goodman, Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, rejects the idea Australia is dependent on it.

Our two economies, well, they39;re fully complementary but the difference is we are really open in the world economy. China is the best place for us to be, dont get me wrong, but if we didn39;t have that, we39;d be somewhere else. I think everybody accepts that.

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The threat posed by Evergrande is hardly a surprise either. As far back as 2021, the Reserve Bank of Australia RBA was writing about it, and Evergrande has been a feature in its policy outlooks ever since.

More than two years later, Australia39;s exports to China have rarely been stronger.

The latest data for December show goods exports hit A18.5 billion 12 billion, up 14.7 on a…