Roger Cook is confident of maintaining strong ties with China — crucial to the State’s multi-billion-dollar iron ore industry — despite a mega-deal to turn WA into Australia’s nuclear submarine hub.

The Premier will on Sunday head to China on a trade mission designed to shore up a relationship that delivers WA billions of dollars a year in iron ore exports, and billions in royalties to the WA Government.

The visit comes days after WA was announced to the world as a key component of AUKUS — a deal struck between Australia, the US and the UK to counter a perceived threat from China in the Indo-Pacific.

Henderson, a shipping yard just south of Fremantle, is being turned into a $25 billion defence precinct capable of building naval ships and maintaining Australia’s future nuclear submarine

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