Malcolm Turnbull, former Australian Minister for Communications, won the party room ballot Monday night to become Australia’s 29th prime minister.

Malcolm Turnbull, former Australian Minister for Communications, won the party room ballot Monday night to replace Tony Abbott as the leader of the ruling Liberal Party and thus is to become Australia’s 29th prime minister.

This prime-minister-to-be has deep personal and business connection to China.

Though Turnbull’s Chinese may not be as fluent as his predecessor Kevin Rudd, his son Alex once went to Beijing to learn Mandarin. Alex met his life partner there: a Chinese girl named Wang Yiwen.

Turnbull's son Alex (L) and his partner Wang Yiwen (R).

Turnbull’s daughter-in-law may have brought him further political connection with China, as Wang Yiwen’s father is a senior scholar in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. As an expert of international public law and trade, Wang’s father’s advice has long been sought by Chinese government, according to Alex.

Besides this family connection with China, Turnbull himself was once an investor in Central China’s Hebei province. In the October of 1994, two years after Deng Xiaoping’s endorsement speech of market economy, Turnbull established the first sino-Western joint venture mining company in China. The company, named Hebei HuaAo Mining Industry Co. Ltd., mines lead and zinc within 11.3 square kilometers of Caijiaying in Hebei, and it boasts 700 employers and 461 million yuan’s profit by 2013.

Turnbull is a sharp businessman; he eyes the booming e-commerce market in China soon after he is no longer a shareholder of the mining company in 2013. A few months ago, Turnbull had his hand in the launching of JD.com Global, an online retailer giant in China.

With all these personal and business connections to China, how Turnbull is going to reshape China-Australia’s foreign diplomacy landscape remains to be seen.