Commentary
On Aug. 10, the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, used the opportunity of an address to the National Press Club in Canberra to bemoan the fragile relationship between Australia and China and to comment upon Australia’s Taiwan policy. By any standard, the comments of the ambassador were bellicose and uncompromising.
He noted that the visit by the U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, violated the “One China Policy” and that, while China was willing to compromise on economic and trade issues, this would not be applied to Taiwan.
For Beijing, Taiwan is simply a renegade province that must be reunified with the mainland. But the ambassador’s most ominous contention concerned his view that, upon unification, the people of Taiwan may be subjected to a process of re-education to obtain a “correct” understanding of China. He also condoned the recent, unprecedented military exercises around Taiwan as legitimate expressions of a sovereign government….