The AFR View
Xi’s sabre-rattling underscores Australia’s China challenge
Australia’s overarching strategic goal should be to encourage Beijing to pull back behind the rules of the global system and prevent strategic competition with the US from escalating into a potentially disastrous war over Taiwan.
Xi Jinping’s sabre-rattling opening speech at the 20th Communist Party Congress warning that China reserves the right to use military force to achieve reunification with Taiwan underscores the unprecedented strategic challenge Australia faces.
Mr Xi’s great power ambition to make China not only rich but geopolitically powerful will continue to destabilise the Pax Americana that has kept the peace in the Asia Pacific region since the end of World War II.
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