Taiwan tensions highlight the gap between the mindset of China’s rulers and our own

The mental gap between our world view and the Chinese government’s is a good deal greater than the 180km of the Taiwan Strait.

You couldn’t get a better illustration of the gap between the mindset of China’s rulers and our own way of seeing the world than an example from Wednesday’s speech in Canberra by its ambassador Xiao Qian.

Beijing’s man might look like a pharmacist but he wasn’t sugar-coating the pills he delivered to the National Press Club.

Xiao’s message was clear: since the recent deterioration in our relations was all down to the previous government, improving them is a matter for us.

Then the questions started and, of course, the thing everyone wanted to talk about was Taiwan, which in recent days has been subjected to even greater intimidation than normal, including ballistic missiles being fired over its capital, Taipei.

Experts are divided over whether a move is imminent against the island and whether China “won” the diplomatic stand-off with its show of force.

Taiwan has been subjected to even greater intimidation than normal in recent days.

To show how gravely China takes the matter of Taiwan, Xiao reached for an analogy he seemed to think Australians would get, the example of Tasmania.

“There’s absolutely no room for us to compromise on the question of Taiwan,” he said, “because it’s a question of sovereignty and territorial integrity just like no Australian governments would ever compromise on Australia’s territorial integrity, and maybe it’s not a good example but Tasmania, was, is, will be, part of Australia.”

Which on the face of it sounds sort of reasonable but is actually complete bollocks.

Whether Tasmania remains a part of Australia is, at the end of the day, a choice for Tasmanians. In the remote likelihood they ever decided they were better off without the lovely subsidies we send their way and preferred to be on their own, and had demonstrated that view through the election of a party devoted to their independence, a position maintained for several years and ratified by a plebiscite of the island’s inhabitants, what would be the response of the rest us?

Would we threaten it with military occupation, promising to re-educate the population in the “correct understanding” of the mainland, as Xiao explained on Wednesday may be necessary if and when Beijing takes over Taiwan?

Of course not. Even to pose the question is to realise the absurdity.

Ambassador Xiao Qian addressing the National Press Club. Picture: Gary Ramage

If Tasmania wanted to secede, the Australian government would not use force to keep it in the federation, just as London would have accepted the result if Scotland had voted to leave Britain in 2014 and Ottawa would have accepted it had Quebec wanted to go it alone in 1980 and 1995.

That’s what democracies do.

And in each of these cases the secession would have involved the breakup of an actual existing country whereas an acceptance that Taiwan is independent wouldn’t change a thing.

The world might pretend that Taiwan is in theory part of One China but since 1895 the only time it has been under the rule of the same Chinese government as Beijing was a four-year period from the end World War II until the communist takeover of the mainland in 1949.

It doesn’t have a long claim to the island pre-1895 either. Before that year’s Japanese takeover it was indisputably part of China, but its ownership dates only to its annexation in 1684.

In other words China’s “was, is, and will be” claim to Taiwan is based on the fact it has managed to rule it in two goes for 215 years or so. That’s not much out of 20,000 years of human habitation.

To put that in some historical context, by the time the Qing dynasty annexed Taiwan, the English had already been in Ireland for 500 years.

Taiwanese military personnel preparing artillery. Picture: Military News Agency

Indeed six Irish counties are still joined with England.

Does England claim its sovereignty of them is based on longevity or some mystic claim of an indissoluble tie to the “motherland”? Of course not, they remain part of the United Kingdom only for as long as a majority of inhabitants want them to.

All of which is a long way of saying the mental gap between our world view and the Chinese government’s is a good deal greater than the 180km of the Taiwan Strait.

Xiao’s comment about bringing the Taiwanese to a “correct understanding” of China shouldn’t be taken lightly.

He didn’t use the term re-education, but when asked about a remark by a Chinese diplomat replied that while he was unaware of an “official policy” his “personal understanding” was “there might be a process for the people in Taiwan to have a correct understanding of China”.

In November the CCP published a document outlining a “correct and uniquely Chinese path to dealing with ethnic affairs” which made explicit what has been clear since Xi Jinping took the reins, namely that it has reversed its longstanding policy of multiculturalism and replaced it with an assimilationist policy towards ethnic minorities.

Our new government deserves praise for its steps on repairing the China relationship, but as Xiao’s speech made clear, there’s only so much one can do. Mentally, they’re on another planet.

Originally published as Taiwan tensions highlight the gap between the mindset of China’s rulers and our own