Foreign Affairs secretary Frances Adamson said the bilateral relationship and China's rapidly changing place in the world required attention and adjustment.

"It will be a relationship where we will need - on both sides - to work quite hard to manage what I really think will be enduring differences," the former ambassador to China told a senate committee on Thursday.

"Some points of difference may come and go and be able to be resolved but other points of difference, which go more deeply to the differences between our systems and our values, are likely to endure."

Ms Adamson shed light on just how delicate the relationship is.

"I speak as a diplomat in saying that will require I think some skill - on our side, their side, and indeed diplomats across the world - as China emerges further, as it grows, as its own objectives occasionally, we find, are contrary to ours," she said.

Ms Adamson recognised Australia's relations with China were the subject of substantial public discussion and commentary.

"There is a need for an ongoing conversation in this country - with the Australian people, with stakeholder groups - to ensure that they feel they have a sense of what's happening," she said.

Australian Associated Press