On Nov. 19, Australian Defence Force Chief General Angus Campbell released the findings of a four-and-a-half-year inquiry into alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. The report recommended that 19 soldiers should be investigated by the Australian Federal Police over the alleged murders of 39 prisoners and civilians.
The report is a brutally honest assessment of alleged wrongdoing — and a subsequent attempted coverup — by the pride of Australia’s armed forces, which shocked the nation.
Despite the serious allegations against a small number of personnel, Australians have good reason to hold their heads high, for the report is also an affirmation of the strength of Australia’s open democracy.
Unlike totalitarian regimes such as China or Russia, when things go wrong, self-correcting democracies such as Australia have the courage to wash their dirty laundry in public and own up to wrongdoing. Those born in democracies intrinsically understand that transparency and public accountability are the best way to improve governance and fix mistakes: Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
To counter China’s lack of transparency, Beijing employs “political warfare” to subvert democracies by distorting their values and twisting the truth.
This was aptly demonstrated by Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian (趙立堅) at a news briefing on Friday last week when he made hay out of the report’s findings, saying that it “fully exposed the hypocrisy of the human rights and freedom these Western countries are always chanting.”
On Monday, Zhao went further by posting a doctored image of a smiling Australian soldier holding a bloody knife to the throat of an Afghan child holding a lamb. A large Australian flag adorns the image’s background. In his social media post of the picture, Zhao wrote: “Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Australian soldiers.”
The decision by Chinese officials to troll the Australian government with such a provocative image shows that Beijing’s so-called “wolf warrior” diplomacy is here to stay. It is also a salient warning of the futility of Australia — or any other nation — that tries to appease the Chinese tiger by appealing to the Chinese Communist Party’s “good nature.”
Only one week prior, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison attempted to reset the strained relationship during a speech at British think tank Policy Exchange by praising China’s economic record and urging Beijing not to view Australia through the lens of strategic competition with the US.
Morrison’s olive branch was summarily snapped in half four days later, when the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced the imposition of fresh tariffs of up to 212 percent on Australian wine.
The Morrison government’s misguided overture betrays a flawed understanding of China, whose neo-imperialistic government views middling powers like Australia as vassal states. Any concessions are interpreted by Beijing as signs of weakness.
Like a tiger having scented blood, an emboldened Beijing has pounced on its prey and is proceeding to tear it up. China wants to make an example out of Australia, believing that geographically isolated from the West, it presents a soft target and will roll over under pressure.
However, it has underestimated Australia’s resolve. Many like-minded democracies, including New Zealand, the US and the UK, have come out in strong support of Australia over these latest attacks. On Wednesday, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) promised concrete actions to support Australia.
Canberra has been quietly bolstering its relationships with friendly regional nations; Beijing’s latest paroxysm of fury will only hasten its realignment. This presents a golden opportunity for Taiwan’s diplomats — they must rise to the challenge.
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Delegation-level visits between the two countries have become an integral part of transformed relations between India and the US. Therefore, the visit by a bipartisan group of seven US lawmakers, led by US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul to India from June 16 to Thursday last week would have largely gone unnoticed in India and abroad. However, the US delegation’s four-day visit to India assumed huge importance this time, because of the meeting between the US lawmakers and the Dalai Lama. This in turn brings us to the focal question: How and to what extent