China ups the ante against Taipei

Two years ago, former prime minister Tony Abbott said in Taipei on Friday, he hesitated to attend the annual Yushan Forum in the city in case that provoked China. So much had changed since 2019, he said, that “nothing is more pressing now than solidarity with Taiwan”. In the interim, “Beijing has torn up the ‘one country, two systems’ treaty in 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”. China also had “weaponised trade, especially against Australia, and its embassy has published 14 demands – essentially that we become a tributary state – that no self-respecting country could accept”.

It was a forceful speech by Mr Abbott, coming after a week of unrelenting Chinese aggression that included flying nuclear-capable bombers across the Taiwan Strait. His trajectory from being concerned not to offend Beijing’s communist rulers to feeling he has no alternative but to speak out is no surprise. He is far from alone in being alarmed by Beijing. Successive swarms of People’s Liberation Army warplanes dispatched over the Taiwan Strait, Alan Dupont writes in Inquirer, suggest Chinese President Xi Jinping “may not wait much longer to achieve his cherished dream of reclaiming Taiwan into the bosom of the motherland”. The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times has warned that once the Australian Army fights the PLA in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, military targets in Australia inevitably will become targets of Chinese missiles: “Since Australia has become an anti-China spearhead, the country should prepare for the worst … let’s see whether Australia is willing to accompany the Taiwan separatist regime to become cannon fodder.”

In view of Taiwanese Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng’s warning this week that China “would be able to launch a full-scale attack on Taiwan with minimal losses by 2025”, the world’s democracies should prepare for that possibility. During the past 20 years China has produced more ships, submarines, aircraft and missiles than any other nation, in a rearmament program unmatched in peacetime since the 1930s.

Cyber warfare also poses dangers, as Liberal senator and Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security chairman James Paterson tells Cameron Stewart in Inquirer. China’s foreign interference and espionage are a greater threat to Australia’s way of life than terrorism, Senator Paterson says. Despite our foreign interference laws, China is working to infiltrate our national life as it seeks to undermine our democracy.

As Mr Abbott says, Australia has no issue with China. But China is beating the drums of war, with Taiwan looming as a flashpoint. China’s belligerence underlines the value of the Morrison government’s strategy in placing Australia at the epicentre of crucial alliances such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, alongside the US, India and Japan; AUKUS; and the Five Eyes intelligence group. When Joe Biden meets Mr Xi for a virtual summit before the end of the year, announced by the White House on Thursday, it is vital the American President reiterate that the US commitment to Taiwan is rock solid. Beijing needs to understand that an attack on Taiwan would lead to incalculable and potentially devastating consequences for China. It must be reminded, as Mr Abbott says, that “the more aggressive it becomes, the more opponents it will have”.