In Taiwan, Scott Morrison adds a foreign headache to Albanese’s domestic migraine

In diplomatic circles, Taiwan — or the Republic of China (ROC), as it is officially known — is something of a four-letter word. It’s certainly been well away from the lips of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong wherever possible.

But in recent weeks, former prime minister Scott Morrison’s deeply inconvenient trip to Taiwan — which many see as the most likely place for any conflict in the region with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which considers Taiwan an errant province — brought an unwanted spotlight back on the island. Morrison, in some sort of bid for relevance, or at least proof of his trouble-making ability, raised the issue that dares not speak its name: “a modernised One China framework”. 

Morrison’s meddling

The One China concept has effectively allowed the PRC, by granting diplomatic relations to nations as it emerged from its isolation from the 1970s, to deprive ROC Taiwan of diplomatic recognition, except by a dwindling handful of tiny nations, including the Vatican. Effectively “One“ China must be recognised if one wants to trade with the PRC.

As Morrison said in his speech in the capital Taipei at the Yushan Forum:

When my government took the decision for Australia to swiftly provide lethal support to assist Ukraine, following the illegal invasion by Russia, this was as much a decision to support Ukraine, as it was to demonstrate our alignment with a global Western resolve to resist the aggression of authoritarianism, especially given the tacit endorsement of the invasion by Beijing, that continues to this day.

I was as concerned about Beijing as I was about Moscow.

But observers, including former deputy ambassador to China John Lander, believe Morrison’s intentions have a darker hue.

“Morrison pays lip service to the need to defend the status quo, while actively working to undermine it, by advocating for treating Taiwan as a separate legal entity in a whole range of international organisations — disingenuously suggesting that it could be done in ways that would ‘not cross the threshold of national statehood’,” Lander said.

Morrison’s untimely intervention comes as relations between Beijing and Canberra continue to thaw, with the recent welcome release of China-born Australian journalist Cheng Lei after more than three years of often horrific detention, and only a week ahead of a visit by Albanese to Beijing — the first by an Australian prime minister since April 2016.

It was an increasingly typical post-government Morrison intervention: a bunch of ideas that would annoy the shit out of the government but were nowhere to be seen during his three and a half years as prime minister.

Indeed, the Coalition under Malcolm Turnbull abandoned a free trade agreement with Taiwan, reportedly under pressure from Beijing and despite countries like Singapore and New Zealand inking them. Morrison’s government then took a guarded approach to Taipei’s bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, awaiting, but never getting, diplomatic cover from the US.

Morrison’s comments were delivered on a paid-for junket by the government-owned and sponsored Yushan Forum. The Taiwanese give good junkets, forever ferrying current parliamentarians, NGOs, business leaders and journalists to the country in much the same way as their cousins across the strait and other governments around the world to get their story out.

And the story is a good one. Despite the best efforts of the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan is a vibrant democracy, having transitioned from dictatorship and autocracy in the 1990s to having peaceful presidential and legislative elections every four years, where power has transitioned between the main two parties several times in recent decades.

It has one of the freest media environments in Asia, legalised same-sex marriage in 2019, and has a  dynamic economy that, ironically, helped fund China’s post-opening-up industrialisation. In 2021-22 Taiwan was Australia’s seventh-best trading partner behind China, Japan, South Korea, India and the US — but ahead of countries like  New Zealand, Indonesia and anywhere in Europe.

But the island state lives in the shadow of the PRC, which has long stated that the “reunification” of the two is inevitable, despite the fact that China’s ruling Communist Party has never actually ruled the island. Prior to the post-World War II Chinese Civil War, it was a colony of Japan, and the mainland’s historical claims are disputed.

Albanese’s delicate dance

As uncomfortable as Morrison’s intervention was on the eve of Albanese’s visit to the US to shore up the multibillion-dollar AUKUS deal with Joe Biden, our prime minister also scored some friendly fire on the same topic.

Australia’s hawk-in-chief, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles told a security conference in Seoul last week: “Australia does not take a position on the final status of Taiwan other than it must be arrived at peacefully, consistent with the will of peoples on both sides of the strait, and not through the use of force or coercion. But the consequences of US-China conflict over Taiwan are so grave that we cannot be passive bystanders.”

At the same time, at the Five Eyes security meeting in California, ASIO chief Mike Burgess took out his own baseball bat.

“The Chinese government are engaged in the most sustained, sophisticated and scaled theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history,” Burgess said. “That behaviour must be called out and must be addressed.”

There are some immediate and short-term challenges here. During Albanese’s upcoming trip to Beijing, he will surely be pressed on this — perhaps not in public, but it’s hard to think pressure won’t be applied behind closed doors to explain Marles’ comments. Xi Jinping is hardly one to soften his views. And the quadrennial Taiwanese presidential and legislative elections are fast approaching in January 2024.

The fact is that the US is now heavily tied up in the war in Ukraine and the developing conflict in the Middle East, so the last thing it needs is a third “front” to open up. On the other side, Beijing has been tying itself into knots over Ukraine and (eventually) has pushed for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

“I want to be very clear: the United States’ defence commitment to the Philippines is ironclad,” Biden said as he greeted Albanese this week. “Any attack on the Filipino aircraft, vessels or armed forces will invoke our mutual defense treaty with the Philippines.”

All of this is enough to give Albanese a foreign headache to match his growing domestic migraine. The last thing he needs is Morrison, the latest in Australia’s conga line of “miserable ghost” prime ministers, making it worse.