Progressing Australia’s relationship with China and the removal of trade sanctions worth $20 billion are expected to be high on the prime minister’s priority list.

Albanese is attending the forum, which brings together leaders from 21 member economies with interests in the Asia-Pacific region.

Members include the United States, Canada and China but leaders of France, Saudi Arabia and Cambodia have been invited as guests to the talks.

Albanese said the summit was an important opportunity to promote Australian business, economic activity and investment in the region.

“It’s good to be in Thailand for the APEC summit. This is about the economic integration with the fastest growing economies in the world in human history,” he told reporters in Bangkok.

It’s also a chance to work on face-to-face relations and Albanese is expected to take part in a number of bilateral meetings with his world leader colleagues.

These follow formal talks at the G20 with United States President Joe Biden, United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others.

Albanese also secured a 32 minute meeting with Chinese President Xi on the summit sidelines, the first time in six years leaders of Australia and China have met formally.

With regional trade and cooperation at the heart of APEC, focus will turn to China’s sanctions on Australian products and Albanese’s attempts to have them removed.

But Albanese is tempering expectations, saying these things will take time to achieve.

Meanwhile, Macron has accused former prime minister Scott Morrison of stoking “nuclear confrontation” with China after ditching a submarine contract with France in favour of acquiring others under a new partnership with the UK and US (AUKUS).

The French president maintained a potential deal to produce conventional submarines for Australia was still “on the table”.

Despite warm relations with Albanese, Macron is still overcoming the loss of the multi-billion dollar deal.

Ahead of the APEC summit in Bangkok, Macron told reporters France had been helping Australia to build a submarine fleet “in-house”.

He said the agreement to build submarines for Australia had not been about confrontation with China.

“Australia will maintain the submarines themselves, and it is not confrontational to China because they are not nuclear-powered submarines,” he told reporters.

“But the choice made by (former) prime minister Morrison was the opposite, re-entering into nuclear confrontation.”

The French president said Morrison had made Australia “completely dependent” because Australia could not produce or maintain the submarines acquired under the AUKUS deal.

Asked about France’s offer to supply diesel-powered submarines to Australia, Macron said: “It is known, it is still on the table”, adding that talks were ongoing on the modalities of a potential deal.