Trade Minister Simon Crean said Hu's formal arrest on charges of business bribery, rather than more serious allegations of stealing state secrets, reflected a "lesser" case.

"We think that the pressure that we've been applying internally has had something of an impact," Crean told reporters ahead of his departure for an ASEAN summit in Bangkok.

"Clearly, we will continue to keep that pressure up and if my counterpart comes to Bangkok, as I expect he will, then I will have the opportunity again to raise this matter with him, as I did a couple of weeks ago."

Crean said the "unfortunate distraction" of Hu was not hurting bilateral trade with Beijing, which was worth 58 billion dollars last year. But he warned it could harm business relations if it dragged on.

"I don't think it's having an impact on the bilateral relationship," said Crean.

"I think unless it's resolved expeditiously and satisfactorily, it could have implications in terms of the way in which businesses see the way they do business with China," he added.

Crean said Beijing needed Australia "as much as we need them" and he urged China to grant Hu access to lawyers and his family, and to resolve the case as soon as possible.

Foreign policy analyst Rod Lyon said the shifting nature of the case showed "China wants to make clear that this is a commercial matter and not an international one."

"Though they are certainly intended to cow resource companies from overplaying their hand in negotiations with China," Lyon, of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told AFP.

Hu, an Australian passport-holder, was detained on July 5 along with three Chinese colleagues during fraught iron ore negotiations.

His arrest followed Rio's snubbing of a proposed 19.5 billion US dollar investment from China's state-owned metals giant Chinalco, raising speculation the events were linked.

Queensland University China analyst David Martin-Jones said Hu's detention was a punitive measure aimed at taking "revenge" on Rio for rejecting Chinalco.

"Something like the Stern Hu (case) indicates that if China feels it's being short-changed in terms of its investment in Australia, it will seek retribution," said Jones.

"What China's really irritated with is the prospect of a BHP-Rio conglomerate that will jack up prices, whereas it thought it could buy Rio relatively cheaply out of the financial crisis and they got turned over by Rio, BHP and the government really," he added.

Chinese officials say Hu is suspected of using improper means to obtain commercial secrets about China's steel enterprises, including "taking bribes from individuals not employed by state organisations".

The case has raised diplomatic frictions between resource-rich Australia and China, the world's biggest iron ore consumer.

Jones said Hu had likely "just acted within the constraints of a fairly non-transparent business sector in China.

"In that context China can always find a case to prosecute him with," he said. "It's the nature of that kind of authoritarianism, where rules are always available to find somebody guilty of an infraction."

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