“The words of this wizard stand on their heads... In the language of Orthanc help means ruin, and saving means slaying, that is plain.” J R R Tolkien, “The Lord of the Rings”.
There are some governments who, if they tell you the weather’s fine, you’d automatically reach for your umbrella. Chief among them is Communist China. Many years ago, an expat Chinese colleague remarked how Chinese state media blatantly lied beyond even their Chinese audience’s capacity for gullibility. If only China’s bootlickers and useful idiots in the West showed a little more critical discernment.
Especially as China’s ‘wolf warrior’ enforcers ramp up the intimidation against Japan. Eighty years ago, Japan was Australia’s most hated enemy: in one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in geopolitics, they are today one of our closest, if unofficial, allies.
China is desperate to try and revive WWII-era Australian animosity toward Japan.
Recently, someone published misinformation in Australia, in the aim of whitewashing Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks of military threat against China by invoking a “survival-threatening situation”.
Probably because China is literally threatening Japan. Just a month ago, Beijing threatened that “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off”. Just days ago, Chinese fighter jets intruding twice into Japanese airspace locked radar on Japanese aircraft scrambled in response. Locking radar is just one step short of actually opening fire.
China’s ramped-up hostility, which follows years of belligerent posturing in the South China Sea that has included aggressions against Australia as well, are a worrying signal. The next decade, after all, is likely to be critical as to whether we avoid a global war or not. That’s the likely time remaining for Xi Jinping to realise his stated goal of taking Taiwan, by force if necessary. Even if he plans, like his idol, Mao, to die in power.
A Chinese attack on Taiwan, though, would not be just an existential threat to Japan. Unlike Russia, who, even should they pose a wider threat to Europe, pose little to no threat locally, China poses a direct and devastating threat to Australia and New Zealand.
If China goes to war, as Xi Jinping is preparing and openly threatening to do, to suppress the democratic state of Taiwan, the consequences will be far worse, the costs far higher, than Hamas’s war against Israel or Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. The implications for Australia, whether or not we participated, would be extremely serious.
This analysis is the conclusion of an Australian Strategic Policy Institute report, Australian Public and Institutional Responses to Taiwan Strait Crises. The authors include senior lecturers in Chinese studies, expat Taiwanese scholar, and other highly-credentialled national security experts. We begin to see why the cravenly appeasing Albanese government moved to remove funding for ASPI.
Its new report takes us back to the Taiwan Strait crises of 1954, 1958 and 1996 to provide depth of perspective, surveys current opinion and sets out powerfully the predictable consequences of a war in the Taiwan Strait.
It highlights yawning deficiencies in our collective grasp of the social and economic implications of any new crisis. It spells out measures required to remedy existing deficiencies.
As the report makes clear, those earlier crises pale into insignificance compared with what’s looming.
Xi’s China is openly preparing to invade Taiwan and is constantly harassing it by military, diplomatic and propagandist means.
And their bought-and-paid-for useful idiots in Australia are cheering them on.
Former prime minister Paul Keating and former foreign minister Bob Carr, among others, have endorsed the Beijing position.
Because, of course they have. They didn’t spend all that time being paid by Chinese Communist Party-owned entities for nothing. Carr, with staggering indifference to the expressed wishes of the Taiwanese people (80 per cent+ for remaining free of China), declares that he “could live with” China seizing the island-state.
Yes, well, Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier could live with Germany seizing Czechoslovakia, too. How’d that work out for history?
So, what are the threats that the report identifies, for Australia?
As the report points out, the Taiwan Strait is a critical cross-roads of world trade. If brought under Chinese control, it would cripple sea lines of communication and supply chains. The crisis would affect everything from communications to energy supply and financial stability. A war from China would spread de-stability throughout the entire Asia-Pacific. Should the US intervene, AUKUS mutual-defence provisions would almost certainly be invoked. The knock-on effects would deepen the cost-of-living crisis in Australia.
The crisis would also inflame social tensions in Australia. We’ve already seen how aggressive diaspora Chinese communities in Australia can be: just ask swimmer Mack Horton, subjected to a sustained campaign of harassment, including broken glass dumped in his home pool. Chinese communist-supported groups openly interfered in the last election, while CCP-linked groups bully students on university campuses and Falun Gong members in the streets.
As the ASPI report argues, it’s not so much about wanting to fight a war against China: it’s about showing enough strength that such a war never happens.
Good luck with Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong showing any such strength against their puppet-masters in Beijing.
