China has conveyed its disapproval to Australia over a visit to Taiwan by former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, a Beijing diplomat said, with the trip threatening to undermine efforts by both nations to improve relations ahead of a state visit later this year.
Speaking at an Asia Society event in Melbourne, Australia, yesterday, Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian (肖千) said Morrison’s visit to Taiwan was a “serious concern” and hoped that Australian politicians would be “sensitive” to China’s views.
After years of diplomatic tensions, relations between the two major trading partners have normalized ahead of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s planned visit to Beijing later this year, but trips to Taiwan by Australian politicians could derail the warming ties.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Morrison met with President Tsai Ing-wen at the Presidential Office in Taipei on Tuesday, where he delivered a speech saying that Australia would “always be great friends with the people of Taiwan.”
Just last month, a delegation of Australian lawmakers visited Taiwan.
China’s envoy yesterday said that he wanted to see the relationship between Australia and China develop even further, adding the common ground between the two nations is greater than their differences.
“We want to move beyond stabilization and to further improve our relationship,” Xiao said.
Relations between Australia and China reached their lowest point in 2020, after Morrison, who was the then-prime minister, called for an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19 — a politically sensitive issue for Beijing. In response, the Chinese government imposed trade sanctions on a range of Australian exports, including heavy tariffs on wine and barley.
Following the election of Albanese’s center-left Labor government in May last year, Australia and China saw a significant improvement in their relations. High-level ministerial meetings between the two nations restarted, while a number of sanctions on Australian exports were lifted.
Albanese is expected to visit Beijing before the end of this year, a trip scheduled to mark 50 years since the first visit of an Australian prime minister to China in 1973.
Asked about growing concerns over the state of the Chinese economy, Xiao said the worsening data was only temporary and that the overall trajectory of the nation’s growth is positive.
“Australia should have confidence in China’s economy, and should have confidence in trade relations, economic relations between the two countries,” he said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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