Japan deserves our solid support

Maintaining good relations with China is unquestionably in Australia’s national interest. But no less important is our vital strategic partnership with Japan, and it will be a pity if the Albanese government, in its anxiety not to do anything that might offend the CCP, fails to show solid support for Tokyo in its rapidly escalating dispute with Beijing over Taiwan.

China’s irrational, “wolf warrior” tirade of bullying and coercion directed against new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, over relatively anodyne remarks she made in the Japanese diet on November 7, have led to a response from Beijing that mirrors its over-the-top, ultimately self-defeating targeting of Australia in 2020 after Scott Morrison made the sensible suggestion that the world would benefit from an independent inquiry into the source of the Covid epidemic.

Japan, under prime ministers Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga, spoke strongly in support of Australia. Mr Morrison is right to say the Albanese government should be doing the same now in support of Ms Takaichi, whose “offence”, in the eyes of the CCP, was to say no more than the bleeding obvious; that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would potentially constitute “an existential crisis for Japan”.

For that, China has told its citizens to avoid travel to Japan, triggering a sharp and costly decline in tourism, with 500,000 airline tickets cancelled in just a few days. As with Australia, a ban on imports of Japanese seafood was imposed, ostensibly over fears of nuclear contamination.

Incredibly, a senior Chinese diplomat even suggested Ms Takaichi’s “dirty neck” should be “cut off”. Beijing has also fired up tensions around disputed and even undisputed islands, remarkably including a vicious propaganda onslaught over Japan’s ownership of the Ryukyu Islands, which includes Okinawa, site of the US’s biggest military base in East Asia.

Anthony Albanese meekly “looking the other way”, as Mr Morrison put it, is not the answer. We should stand clearly with a democratic ally that had stood with us. It will be a tragedy if, as Strategic Analysis Australia director Peter Jennings suggested, Australia under Mr Albanese’s leadership shows itself to be no better than a “fair-weather friend” to its true allies. Ms Takaichi, an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, is undoubtedly right to have spoken frankly about Japanese concerns over Taiwan.

The pre-eminence of the issue to our region’s security future has been amplified yet again by Donald Trump’s signing on Tuesday of the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, which places the US relationship with Taipei on a long-term statutory pathway towards more normal ties.