Kevin Rudd warns of five-year window to deter Chinese invasion of Taiwan

Kevin Rudd says the US has just five years to deter China from going to war over Taiwan. But the new US ambassador’s warning puts him out of step with Penny Wong.

Kevin Rudd has warned the US and its allies have just five years to develop a military and economic deterrent that is powerful enough to convince China not to go to war over Taiwan.

In his first expansive comments on China since becoming Australia’s US ambassador, Dr Rudd said he believed President Xi Jinping was “not interested in a war right now” and that China was “actually not ready” to reclaim Taiwan by force.

The former prime minister instead pointed to 2027 as a crucial turning point, a timeline laid out by US intelligence chiefs and the Taiwanese government based on Mr Xi ordering China’s military to be ready to act by then.

Dr Rudd shared his analysis at a high-powered conference in Los Angeles, after Foreign Affairs Penny Wong last month decried speculation about Taiwan’s fate as “the most dangerous of parlour games”.

Kevin Rudd meeting Joe Biden last month to officially begin his posting as Australia's US Ambassador. Picture: Supplied

“There is much frenzied discussion in political and media circles over timelines and scenarios when it comes to Taiwan. Anyone in positions like mine who feels an urge to add to that discussion should resist the temptation,” she told the National Press Club.

Unlike the Australian government, US leaders have been far more willing to discuss when China could invade Taiwan, with former Obama administration official Michèle Flournoy saying on Wednesday that China had been “telegraphing their intentions” about 2027.

Dr Rudd, appearing alongside Ms Flournoy at a Milken Institute event, said he agreed with her assessment.

Kevin Rudd in 2013 as the prime minister with Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese. Picture: Gary Ramage

“We have this five years where there still is a risk of crisis, conflict and war by accident, so let’s work to build up as many guardrails as possible to reduce that possibility, while at the same time recognising that the challenge of deterrence lies again – as Michelle pointed out before – in the post-27 period,” he said.

“There are five good years to be used and deployed now to get that integrated deterrence equation right. But unless we are equally clear in our analysis about what actually finally causes Xi Jinping and the Central Military Commission and the People’s Bank of China to say, the risk of doing this is too great, then we will have failed the exercise.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: Ng Han Guan (AP)

Dr Rudd shared similar views before he was tapped as the ambassador in December, including in a November speech in which he said the next five years would “determine the success or otherwise of US efforts to deter China from taking medium-to-long-term military action against Taiwan”.

As one of the world’s top China scholars, Dr Rudd has said the key reason Senator Wong and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sent him to Washington DC was to deal with the challenge of managing China’s increasingly aggressive rise.

Originally published as Kevin Rudd warns of five-year window to deter Chinese invasion of Taiwan