Australia All Bark and No Bite on Taiwan

Larissa Stünkel
Introduction:
As Australia gears up for national elections, tensions surrounding the nation’s foreign policy trajectory are becoming unmistakable — particularly when it comes to Taiwan and its place in China–Australia tensions.
In a November 2021 parliamentary speech, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong rebuked Prime Minister Scott Morrison for his solid backing of Taiwan. She accused Morrison of using Taipei as a pawn to shore up electoral support and ‘desperately playing politics on China whenever he’s in trouble’. Now that Australia and Taiwan are seemingly edging closer — and celebrating the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Australian Office in Taipei — questions about Canberra’s willingness to deepen ties with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration remain.
It took Defence Minister Peter Dutton a mere 24 hours to lash out against Wong, reprimanding her for not properly reflecting the seriousness of current geopolitical tensions between Canberra and Beijing. Wong had used her carefully crafted speech to also decry Dutton’s recent public commitment to defend Taiwan in the event of an attack. Her opposition Labor party has long maintained that it would reshuffle Australia’s foreign policy to emphasise international collaboration over antagonism.
Later that week, Dutton and Morrison both doubled down on standing by Taiwan, while also warning that Beijing’s provocations should not be underestimated. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed these developments with ‘sincere gratitude’, indicating that the self-governing island remains optimistic about Canberra’s support.
Related Publications
-
Connecting Taiwan and Finland: An Interview with Prof. Julie Yu-Wen Chen
Julie Yu-wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Since 2023, she has been involved in the EU twinning project “The EU in the […]
-
Taiwan and the Diplomatic Squeeze
In mid-March 2023, the self-governing island of Taiwan lost another one of its already few diplomatic allies. Announcing the severing of diplomatic ties between Taiwan and Honduras on Twitter on March 15, […]
-
Slowly Taking Off: Nordic-Taiwan Relations
Taiwan has in recent years attracted increasing attention all over the world. It has become the focal point of conflict in the U.S.-China rivalry in the Indo-Pacific and has also […]
-
Unpacking Beijing’s Narrative on Taiwan
Executive Summary Shaping economic rules, technology standards, and political institutions have been the core pillars of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s efforts to advance his authoritarian model and weaken democratic processes […]
-
India in a world of asymmetrical multipolarity
In the past decade, the world has gathered an irreversible momentum in global geopolitical transitions, including the fragmentation and reconfiguration of the international order. This is largely due to the […]
-
Hong Kong sees signs of life amid political stasis
At the beginning of 2023 Hong Kong followed mainland China as it dramatically relaxed COVID-19 related travel restrictions. This considerably improved the territory’s economic mood. The tourism industry and retail […]