SHANGHAI — When Stern Hu was convicted in 2010 of corruption charges and sent to prison in China, the Australian mining executive’s fate strained ties between Canberra and an important trading partner.

Eight years later, the world has changed. But as Mr. Hu, a former Rio Tinto executive, left jail on Wednesday, having served most of a 10-year sentence, many of the concerns about a deep but fraught economic and political relationship between the two countries have not.

In fact, the tensions that framed Mr. Hu’s trial — including concerns about a Chinese industrial policy that blurs the line between politics and business — have been very much on display in recent months.

Australia passed sweeping national security legislation just last week that bans foreign interference in politics and makes it a crime to damage Australia’s economic relations with another country. Australian politicians and news outlets have been debating whether to purchase equipment from Huawei, the Chinese telecom-equipment maker, to build out its next-generation cellular network, following American concerns about Huawei’s ties to Beijing.