Keeping record straight on China

China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, is doing a good job asserting his country’s position on contentious issues including the status of Taiwan and the South China Sea. He has given a lengthy recent interview to this newspaper and on Tuesday wrote an opinion article that was published in The Australian Financial Review.

In that article Mr Xiao was critical that some Australian media had provided a platform for “false voices” promoting so-called incremental independence and claiming that Taiwan’s status was being undermined by China. Mr Xiao has said previously he believed there were “misunderstandings” by some in Australia about the issue. The Chinese Communist Party’s views on Taiwan are well known, and were expansively restated in the opinion article.

If there is any misunderstanding it is about how a free media operates. “Despite its Marxist roots incorporating dialectic – reasoned argumentation – contemporary Chinese Communist Party practice does not favour opening itself to public debate,” Rowan Callick explained in these pages early this month. “Its preferred pathway is to insist that those who disagree simply fail to understand its positions, which emerge from the unchallengeable truths at its core.”

Thus Mr Xiao told The Australian’s foreign affairs and defence correspondent, Ben Packham: “I have a very strong impression that there are people in this country (Australia) who have misunderstandings about Taiwan.” According to defence and security expert Peter Jennings, correcting these misunderstandings is considered to be a last instalment in a “full turnaround” in relations between Australia and China following the removal of the last remaining trade sanctions.

Mr Xiao’s displeasure reflects the fact Australian media is prepared to expose China’s “unchallengeable truths” to public debate. In his report following his interview with Mr Xiao, Packham quoted Taiwan’s representative in Australia, Douglas Hsu, who said the territory was facing a campaign of “cognitive warfare” by China but it remained “a vibrant ­democracy and a global economic powerhouse”. Former Defence official Michael Shoebridge said there was “no misunderstanding about Beijing’s intentions towards Taiwan, or its outrageous claim of extensive sovereignty over the South China Sea”.

Presenting different opinions on contentious issues is the normal state of affairs for a free press doing its job. China is entitled to put its case. But it also must be careful with the facts. A transcript of the Packham interview has been posted on the embassy website, which takes the liberty of paraphrasing some of the questions that were asked. As Mr Xiao no doubt is aware, small changes in context can have a big impact on understanding.