Tony Abbott warns China may ‘lash out’ and attack Taiwan soon

Ex-PM Tony Abbott has told an audience in Taiwan he fears the Chinese Communist Party could “lash out disastrously very soon”.

Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has told an audience in Taiwan he fears the Chinese Communist Party “sensing that its relative power might have peaked, with its population ageing, its economy slowing, and its finances creaking” could “lash out disastrously very soon”.

In speech to a regional forum in Taipei, which is certain to anger Beijing, the former prime minster painted a stark picture of growing menace to peace from a Communist China, saying “nothing is more pressing right now, than solidarity with Taiwan, if we want a better world” and that Australia cannot “be indifferent to the fate of a fellow democracy of almost 25 million people.”

Mr Abbott’s visit is the first to Taiwan by a former Australian prime minister. Picture: AAP Image/POOL/Mick Tsikasvia NCA NewsWire

Mr Abbott’s visit to Taiwan, a country China regards as a rebel province is the first by a former Australian Prime Minister and comes at a time when bilateral relations between Beijing and Canberra are at their lowest ebb since Australia recognised the communist regime as the country’s legitimate ruler.

The former PM did not hold back in his criticism of recent behaviour by China’s government, saying that in the past two years it had: “torn-up the “one country, two systems” treaty on Hong Kong; put upwards of a million Uighurs into concentration camps; boosted cyber spying on its own citizens; cancelled popular personalities in favour of a cult of the new red emperor; brutalised Indian soldiers in the Himalayas; coerced other claimants in its eastern seas; and flown ever-more intimidatory sorties against Taiwan.”

Tony Abbott with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei on Thursday.

He also said China’s demands of Australia were “essentially that we become a tributary state,” demands that “no self-respecting country could accept.”

Mr Abbott hinted that China’s current belligerence could be explained by its ageing population and slowing economy.

“Our challenge is to try to ensure that the unthinkable remains unlikely; and that the possible doesn’t become the probable,” he said, as “nowhere is the struggle between liberty and tyranny more stark than across the Taiwan Strait.”

In his speech Mr Abbott also called for Taiwan to be admitted to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the regional trade forum that currently excludes Beijing, saying China “could never be admitted to the TPP while engaged in a trade war with Australia, and in predatory trade all-round.”