War in Taiwan unlikely ‘because Xi not stupid’, says Barnaby Joyce

Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce believes China and Taiwan are unlikely to engage in a major conflict because ‘it is too stupid, and they are not stupid’.

Barnaby Joyce in Taiwan.

Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce believes China and Taiwan are unlikely to engage in a major conflict because “it is too stupid, and they are not stupid”, with Xi Jinping more likely to adopt an incremental strategy to assert Beijing’s power.

The Nationals MP, who travelled with Labor and Liberal MPs to Taipei last week for high-level meetings including with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, attacked Anthony Albanese for attempting to placate Beijing and wanting Australia’s first delegation since 2019 to be “invisible”.

“As I got on the plane to return home, the thought that ran through my mind was not of the threat to Taiwan from China but the threat to Australia from our unbridled romantic naivety to the economic reality of the world as it is now,” Mr Joyce, writing in The Australian, said.

“This economic reality underpins the new global power paradigm. China and Taiwan, I believe, are unlikely to come to a conflict. It is too stupid and they are not stupid. China instead will try and assert its power incrementally.

“There can only be one sun in the sky and the new dynastic form of leadership in China under President Xi believes that heavenly body is Beijing. This is not the future, this is now, and it will continue on this course. It has been happening, it is accelerating in ­effect and it will arrive as vassal status for the weak.”

Mr Joyce said China was playing the long game and stressed that economic strength from “being the best in many fields” was as important as military strength.

The opposition veterans’ affairs spokesman, who was joined on the trip by Labor MPs Meryl Swanson and Libby Coker, Liberal MP Gavin Pearce and LNP MPs Scott Buchholz and Terry Young, said falling education standards and an innovation drain had exposed Australia’s economic strength. He said Taiwan, the world’s largest producer of semiconductors used in cars, mobile phones and missiles, benefited from its greatest resource – “IQ”.

“Our education has to produce the best mathematics, physics and chemistry students.

“In the humanities, we need to have proficiency in English better than the Singaporeans and more languages spoken at year 12 than just English,” he wrote. “Agriculture has to produce not just volume but also the highest quality. Fortunately, we do produce the highest quality in this field. Asia has such a great advantage with their Confucian ethos, respect for family, teachers and the law.

“They waste little energy and have less time for those who want to be belligerents outside the guide rails. We are so concerned with trying to make everyone happy we create the all-­inclusive culture that leaves us all behind.”

After Labor MPs on the trip were silenced, Mr Joyce said on the ground he was told that “China will ask that you listen”, which meant “You will do as you are told if asked”.

“When asked about the delegation,” he said, “Anthony Albanese said ‘I have no idea, I’m not going, you should ask them’. Rather an odd response considering he had previously been on a delegation himself, and ours included and was led by Labor.

“It almost sounds like he was trying to hide us under a rock, maybe as a duty to a request made to him. In the same month, Foreign Minister Penny Wong could not find the time to meet a delegation of Uighur representatives whose people are being persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party. Obviously, purely a simple oversight because five minutes couldn’t be found in the diary.”