Category: General

China is changing the status quo in the region by conducting military sorties near Taiwan, Premier Su Tseng-chang (???) said Friday after the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) maneuvers were criticized by the United States’ top diplomat a day earlier.

Sending military planes to conduct exercises near Taiwan is “an act of changing the status quo” and an “inappropriate use of force,” Su said when asked to comment on the speech on the U.S.’ China policy by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday.

In his speech, Blinken criticized Beijing for its “increasingly provocative rhetoric and activity” against Taiwan that he said were “deeply destabilizing,” risked miscalculation, and threatened the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait.

Blinken specifically cited the sorties of PLA aircraft in airspace near Taiwan on an almost daily basis as an example of the destabilizing behavior.

The U.S. continued to oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side of the Taiwan Strait and expected cross-strait differences to be resolved peacefully, Blinken said.

While thanking Blinken for voicing concern over China’s military maneuvers, Su said Taiwan would defend itself and work with other countries to contribute to the peace and stability of the region.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said it was pleased to see the secretary of state reaffirming the U.S.’ commitment to Taiwan’s security.

According to MOFA, Blinken’s speech showed that the U.S. is very concerned about China’s attempts to exert military and economic pressure on Taiwan and isolate the country.

Meanwhile, Ting Shu-fan (???), professor emeritus at National Chengchi University, observed that Blinken merely reiterated the U.S.’ existing stance by saying the country would try to strengthen its relationship with Taiwan in accordance with the one China policy.

Blinken’s remarks did not come as a surprise, nor did they contain the more assertive wording used by President Joe Biden, Ting said, referring to the president’s off-the-cuff comments at a press conference in Tokyo on Monday suggesting the U.S. would be willing to intervene militarily if China were to attack Taiwan.

Biden later stressed that the U.S. policy toward Taiwan has not changed, something that Blinken once again stated during his policy speech.

The U.S. “remains committed to our one-China policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiqués [and] the Six Assurances,” the top diplomat said.

Nevertheless, Chen Fang-yu (???), a political science professor at Taipei-based Soochow University, took note of Blinken’s use of a Taiwan Relations Act provision in his speech.

Blinken said the U.S. would “maintain our capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security or the social or economic system of Taiwan.”

Chen, one of the editors of the Facebook page US Taiwan Watch, argued that although the provision remains ambiguous, it could serve as the legal basis for a U.S. intervention in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

The Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) has lowered its forecast for Taiwan’s 2022 gross domestic product (GDP) to 3.91 percent, falling below the 4 percent floor the government had previously anticipated.

The downward revision was the result of geopolitical tensions from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has driven up inflation, and a spike in domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases in Taiwan, affecting private consumption, the DGBAS said Friday.

The latest GDP growth forecast represented a decline of 0.51 percentage points from a 4.42 percent increase estimate the DGBAS made in February.

The DGBAS also raised its forecast of Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) by 0.74 percentage points from the February estimate to 2.67 percent, topping the 2 percent alert set by the country’s central bank.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

An award-winning documentary that retraces the footsteps of a man from New Zealand who searched for his missing son in Taiwan officially opened in theaters across Taiwan on Friday.

Titled “Phil’s Journey,” the film by Taiwanese director Chen Yeong-rury (???) chronicles the experiences of New Zealand sculptor Phil Tchernegovski, who lost contact with his son Reuben in 1998 after the son disappeared during a solo backpacking trip in the Alishan area.

It retraces the steps the father took to find his son on six trips to Taiwan between 1998 and 2002 and the affinity he developed for Taiwan and its people during that time even though his son was never located.

Since its completion, the documentary has been screened at several film festivals and won multiple awards, including a Best Asian Film Award at the International World Film Awards and Best Documentary at the 7th Art Independent International Film Festival and Port Blair International Film Festival.

For the director, it was a labor of love that took four years to film and complete, though it was inspired by some reading on a trip in 2012.

According to Chen, he picked up a book for his flight called “15 Asteroids (??????),” a collection of 15 stories written in 2011 by Liu Ka-shiang (???), who is now the chairman of the Central News Agency.

The first story, which was about Tchernegovski, brought him to tears on the plane and left him determined to put the story on the big screen, Chen said in an interview with CNA.

He was unable to get in touch with the New Zealander to launch the project, however, until seeing Liu at an event.

Liu and Taiwanese expats in New Zealand then helped him locate Tchernegovski, who initially questioned Chen’s motivation for wanting to document his story.

“Although Mr. Phil had already been interviewed by a lot of media, he asked me right off the bat why I wanted to make a documentary,” Chen said.

“I told him I intended to visualize the beauty of fatherly love, to which he responded that what he did was nothing and that any father would have done the same. I also told him that I wanted to document the kindness of the Taiwanese people, and that he immediately agreed to.”

Chen said he quickly realized that virtual interviews were inadequate for his purposes, so he traveled to New Zealand with his wife for their 20th anniversary in 2017 to advance the project.

He also flew Tchernegovski to Taiwan to have him revisit his footsteps and the people who helped him during his missions to find his son, whose last known whereabouts were between the Alishan National Forest Recreation Area and the Alishan Forest Railway’s Mianyue Station further up in the mountains.

Tchernegovski was able to meet up with the Indigenous Tsou people from Alishan Township’s Fongshan and Laiji Villages who had helped him search the mountain area years ago and tried to counsel him to let go of his son at the time.

The help and support he received inspired him to pen the book “Mountain of the Beautiful Moon,” published in Chinese in early 2015, in which he talked about his love for Taiwan and its people, a feeling that still remains.

The documentary shows Tchernegovski greeting Alishan like he would his own child, feeling somewhat relieved that his son could at least come to rest in a beautiful land.

An interesting side plot of the movie touches on Tchernegovski’s chance friendship with Taiwanese singer Jody Chiang (??), whose voice soothed him during his time of grief.

The two eventually shared a friendly bond, with Chiang dedicating a song to the family upon hearing their story. When Tchernegovski released his book in Chinese, Chiang also penned the preface for the sculptor to promote his book.

The film opens Friday in theaters around Taiwan.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

Local consumer confidence weakened to a two-year low in May amid concerns over rising inflation, National Central University (NCU) said Friday.

Citing a survey conducted between May 18 and 21, NCU said the consumer confidence index (CCI) fell 3.96 points from a month earlier to 67.81, the lowest level since May 2020, when the CCI stood at 64.87.

According to the university, all of the six factors in the May CCI moved lower to push the index down for the fourth consecutive month.

The CCI gauges the level of confidence people have regarding employment prospects, family finances, consumer prices, the local economic climate, the stock market, and the likelihood of purchasing durable goods over the coming six months.

Dachrahn Wu (???), director of NCU’s Research Center for Taiwan Economic Development, told reporters that the subindex on the family finances dipped to 75.95, its lowest point since March 2014 when it stood at 74.55.

Inflation, slowing global demand, employment

Wu said many families were grappling with the effects of rising inflation, which has prompted the central bank to raise its key interests in March.

Several major central banks around the world, including the United States Federal Reserve, also launched rate hike cycles around the same time, denting equity markets and adding more pressure on family finances, Wu added.

The local central bank raised interest rates by 25 basis points in March to fight inflation, and markets will be watching developments at the bank’s next policymaking meeting on June 16 closely.

Wu said rising inflation had stymied domestic consumption. Slowing global demand could affect Taiwan’s export-oriented economy and hurt the local job market further, he added.

Wu warned that such a scenario could cause an increase in furloughed workers in the manufacturing sector in the second half of this year.

“With the local economy expected to deteriorate, I am afraid that many families will struggle to get by,” Wu said.

Among the five factors in the CCI, the subindexes on consumer prices, employment, and the local economic climate dropped by 1.25, 1.95 and 3.55 points, respectively, from a month earlier to 30.55, 66.80, and 85.85 in May.

In addition, the subindexes on the stock market, and the likelihood of purchasing durable goods also fell by 8.70 and 5.10, respectively, from a month earlier to 32.90 and 114.80 in May.

With the local equity market stuck in the doldrums in recent sessions amid global volatility and geopolitical risks, the stock market subindex sunk to its lowest level since October 2020, when the subindex stood at 30.

Due to growing inflation, the willingness to buy durable goods such as cars and homes was also dampened in May, the survey found.

‘Stagflation’ concerns

“Under such unfavorable circumstances, I also fear that Taiwan will suffer from so-called stagflation,” Wu said, referring to when inflation is high, the economic growth rate slows, and unemployment remains steadily high.

As a result, Wu urged the central bank to carefully adjust its monetary policy.

In April, Taiwan’s CPI soared 3.38 percent year-over-year, the highest growth since August 2012, when it surged 3.42 percent, with the core CPI, which excludes vegetables, fruits, and energy, also rising 2.53 percent.

In the first four months of this year, the local CPI rose 2.95 percent from a year earlier.

A subindex score of 0-100 indicates pessimism, while a score of 100-200 shows optimism, NCU said, noting that optimism was seen in May only in the subindex for the likelihood of purchasing durable goods over the next six months.

The NCU survey in May collected 2,810 valid questionnaires from local consumers aged 20 and over. It had a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 2.0 percentage points.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

Astronomy buffs will have a chance to see the moon eclipse Venus on Friday, albeit in less-than-stellar viewing conditions, as the event will take place during the day and possibly in the rain, according to the Taipei Astronomical Museum.

The phenomenon, known as a lunar occultation, will be visible in Taiwan from noon to 1:03 p.m., and can also be observed in Hong Kong and parts of Southeast Asia, the museum said.

The last time a lunar occultation of Venus could be seen in Taiwan was 2003, and the next time will not be until 2036, the museum said.

Because the eclipse will occur during daytime hours, it will not be visible with the naked eye.

People with star tracking equatorial mounts, however, can train their telescopes on Venus before dawn and track the planet until the occultation occurs, the museum said.

Weather permitting, a narrated livestream of the event viewed through a professional-grade telescope will be broadcast on YouTube beginning at 11:40 a.m., it said.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

The Chinese government directs hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to favored domestic companies every year, according to a new study, and does so at a far greater rate, relative to the size of its economy, than other developed and developing countries.

The new analysis was conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. It found that the benefits, in the form of direct subsidies, below-market-rate loans and land sales, tax breaks, and capital provided by state-run investment funds in 2019 were worth at least $248 billion and as much as $407 billion, depending on how exchange rates are accounted for.

The figure amounts to 1.73% of China’s gross domestic product in 2019, a far higher percentage than was recorded in seven other countries examined by the authors.

Gathering the same data from Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the United States, the authors found that the country with the next largest percentage of GDP spent on promoting industrial policy was South Korea, at 0.67%. The United States, by contrast, spent about 0.39% of GDP on subsidies and other benefits to private businesses.

“Even when utilizing a conservative methodology, China is an outlier,” the report finds. “It spends far more on supporting its industries than any other economy in the study.”

According to the authors, their estimate of China’s spending is probably lower than the actual amount Beijing directs toward favored companies, because the study “excludes unquantifiable instruments of industrial policy and may underestimate measures where data are unavailable or incomplete. Therefore, total industrial policy spending in China may be significantly higher.”

Spotlight on trade practices

The study was written by CSIS senior fellow Gerard DiPippo; fellow Ilaria Mazzocco; Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics; and Senior Vice President Matthew P. Goodman. It is the first to attempt to quantify the degree of financial support China puts into its execution of industrial policy.

The report carries a note indicating that it was “made possible by generous funding from the U.S. Department of State.”

The authors say their findings show that “greater transparency and more harmonized reporting about industrial policy spending is vital.” They call on governments “to consistently provide more comprehensive and detailed data about the ways in which they support their companies and industries.”

The report stops short of calling for specific actions to address the disparity in support received by Chinese and non-Chinese firms.

“There are strengths and weaknesses to using data to shape policy at various levels of governance (from unilateral to multilateral) and with different levels of constraining authority (e.g., as a source of transparency or as a tool for imposing penalties),” the authors write. “Policymakers need to determine how best to employ this new information, keeping in mind the potential trade-offs between speed, legitimacy, and effectiveness when responding to China and other countries’ industrial policies.”

However, the report is likely to renew calls among leaders in the U.S., Europe and other countries that compete with China on the global stage for a response.

For many years, leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere have complained that support from the Chinese government allows Chinese firms that export goods and services to offer artificially low prices. This allows them to capture a larger share of the market than they otherwise would have and makes it difficult for unsubsidized firms to compete.

‘Not surprising’

“It’s not surprising that government subsidies are as wide and deep as reported,” Doug Barry, a senior director with the U.S.-China Business Council, told VOA in an email exchange. “Such substantial subsidies are unfair to foreign nonsubsidized competitors, including many U.S. companies. The subsidies appear to violate the spirit if not the letter of WTO rules and principles.”

Barry said that U.S. companies that do business in China had hoped that the issue of subsidies would be part of a “Phase Two” negotiation between Washington and Beijing, following an agreement the Trump administration reached with Beijing in 2020.

However, China failed to live up to promises to purchase billions of dollars of U.S. goods, putting a hold on progression to the next phase of discussions. That, and the revelation of the extent to which China subsidizes its domestic company, may foreshadow further punitive action from the U.S.

“Another round of tariffs and other sanctions may be in the offing,” Barry said. “This would be unfortunate for U.S.-China relations and the global trading system.”

Administration’s position unclear

Late last year, the Biden administration signaled that it was considering the launch of a new investigation into China’s trade practices, which could result in the imposition of further tariffs.

However, the CSIS report was released on the same day that U.S. President Joe Biden moved global markets by suggesting he might lift some of the tariffs imposed on $360 billion worth of goods imported to the U.S. from China every year.

The tariffs were put in place by his predecessor during a trade war with China in 2018 and 2019.

Asked about Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s suggestion that some of the tariffs be lifted, Biden said he was “considering” it.

“We did not impose any of those tariffs. They were imposed by the previous administration, and they are under consideration,” he said.

Biden was in Japan on Monday to unveil the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a set of negotiating points on trade practices adopted by the U.S. and 12 other nations, including Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and others.

China silent

As of Tuesday, the Chinese government had not issued an official response to the report. A request from VOA for comment from the Chinese embassy in Washington had not received a reply when this story was published.

In the past, China has pushed back against U.S. claims that it unfairly advantages its domestic businesses. In February, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that the U.S. should not “denigrate China’s development path. He added, “[H]ow the US develops itself and enhances its competitiveness is its own business, but it shouldn’t make an issue out of China, still less use it as a pretext to meddle in China’s domestic affairs and harm China’s interests.”

In November of last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that his country was willing to engage in “active and open” talks about trade, including the issue of subsidies.

U.S. industrial policy

While U.S. leaders frequently complain about China’s industrial policy, in recent years the federal government has shown a greater willingness to use its influence to affect decisions normally left to the domestic private sector.

Shortages of key medical equipment at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and major supply chain problems in 2021 have spurred lawmakers to act. In July 2021, for example, Congress approved $52 billion in financing to support the construction of semiconductor manufacturing plants in the U.S.

Just last week, Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to address a shortage of infant formula in the U.S., requiring that the companies that produce the ingredients of formula to give priority access to those goods to specific companies.

One lawmaker who has been particularly vocal on the topic of industrial policy is Senator Marco Rubio. In April, the Florida Republican introduced legislation to support U.S. mining of rare earth minerals used in sophisticated electronics and batteries.

“I hope my colleagues in the Senate will join me in passing this piece of legislation, which is vital to keeping our country safe,” Rubio said in remarks on the Senate floor. “However, we can’t stop with rare earth metals. There are other industries equally essential to our national and economic security that need reshoring. In the coming months, it is critical that we begin rebuilding our capacity to produce pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and more.”

He added, “This is the kind of targeted industrial policy America needs to maintain its status as a great power.”

Source: Voice of America

TOKYO —

Ending his 6-day trip to Asia, U.S. President Joe Biden used the war in Ukraine to send a message to China to uphold the fundamental principles of the international order.

“Territorial integrity and sovereignty, international law, human rights must always be defended, regardless of where they’re violated in the world,” Biden said in remarks during a Tokyo summit with leaders of Japan, India and Australia — the informal grouping known as the Quad.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine heightens the importance of the administration’s strategy goals to “advance a free, open, connected, secure and resilient Indo-Pacific,” Biden said during the Quad meeting on his last day in Asia, with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and newly elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“As long as Russia continues the war, the United States will work with our partners to help be the global response, because it’s going to affect all parts of the world,” Biden said. “At the same time, the United States must and will be strong, steady, and enduring partner in the Indo-Pacific.”

Kishida echoed Biden’s statement. “Russian invasion into Ukraine squarely challenges the principles which are enshrined in the United Nations Charter,” he said. “We should never, ever allow a similar incident to happen in the Indo-Pacific.”

The Quad joint statement and the remarks of the four leaders did not mention China directly but underscored the goal of building an Indo-Pacific region that respects sovereignty and the rule of law — diplomatic wording understood to be directed at Beijing.

Beijing has dramatically increased its military spending in recent years, including its naval power. It now has the world’s second largest defense budget after the United States. And in terms of the numbers of vessels it claims it has, the Chinese navy is now the biggest in the world, said Sam Roggeveen, director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program.

“In terms of its capability, it’s still very much second best to the United States, but it’s catching up very quickly,” Roggeveen told VOA.

While many in the region fear an invasion of Taiwan, Chinese militarization is most acutely felt in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, where Beijing has transformed at least three artificial islands into military bases despite President Xi Jinping’s past assurances that it would not.

China controls the Paracel Islands, one of two major archipelagos in the South China Sea, and claims entire ownership of the other — the Spratly Islands — also claimed entirely by Taiwan and Vietnam. Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines claim parts of Spratly.

The seas are extremely strategic with trillions of dollars’ worth or approximately one-third of all global maritime trade passing through its shipping lanes each year.

Quad leaders stated they “strongly oppose any coercive, provocative or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo and increase tensions in the area, such as the militarization of disputed features, the dangerous use of coast guard vessels and maritime militia, and efforts to disrupt other countries’ offshore resource exploitation activities.”

Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness

As part of an effort to counter Chinese activity in the region, Quad leaders unveiled a maritime initiative aimed at monitoring territorial waters, the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness, IPMDA.

According to a statement released by the White House, the program will use satellite technology to connect existing surveillance centers and create a tracking system for illegal fishing from the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia to the South Pacific. It will track “dark shipping” — vessels with their transponder systems switched off to avoid detection.

The initiative will also give regional partners the tools they need to conduct rescue at sea and other humanitarian activities, said an administration official in a briefing to reporters.

“The data will be unclassified, which will allow the Quad to provide it to a wide range of partners who wish to benefit,” the official said. “And it recognizes that the primary demand on this in many ways is not from militaries, it is for the equivalent of Coast Guards to be able to do both rescue at sea, to be able to monitor fishing, to be able to track illegal fishing.”

China is the worst illegal fishing offender, according to the 2021 IUU Fishing Index, which maps illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in 152 coastal countries.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing profoundly impacts the economies of regional countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, removing billions of dollars’ worth of fish every year from their legal trading system.

To share information on these activities with partner countries, the initiative will utilize the existing regional “fusion centers” that are currently focused on tracking maritime piracy, such as the Information Fusion Center-Indian Ocean Region, based in India; the Information Fusion Center, based in Singapore; the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency, based in the Solomon Islands and the Pacific Fusion Center, based in Vanuatu, both of which receive support from Australia.

While most regional countries are aware of the extent of illegal fishing in their waters, some lack the capacity to address the problem and others lack the political will because they are also engaged in the activity, said Aaron Connelly, a senior fellow for Southeast Asian politics and foreign policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“And so, while this is intended, I think, to highlight Chinese actions in their waters, it may also highlight some of the countries that the United States and the Quad countries are trying to court, what they are doing in others’ waters,” Connelly told VOA.

The initiative lacks details as Quad partners say it will begin consultations with partners in the region. What also remains unclear, Connelly pointed out, is what countries will do with the surveillance data.

“So, I’m not sure that this is going to make a difference,” Connelly said. “It’s not the game changer that the administration in its statement said that it would be.”

As the initiative proceeds, “the Quad will identify future technologies of promise, allowing IPMDA to remain a cutting-edge partnership that promotes peace and stability throughout the region,” according to the White House.

Source: Voice of America

Australia’s new leader signaled Tuesday that he would resist growing Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region — seeming to dismiss Beijing’s hopeful comments upon his election and portending a growing closeness between the United States and Australia.

“We will determine our own values,” newly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday, on the sidelines of a meeting of leaders of the Quad, an informal grouping of the United States, Japan, India and Australia. “We will determine Australia’s future direction. It’s China that’s changed, not Australia.”

He added that he had received a formal congratulatory note from Chinese Premier Li Keqiang but had not spoken to Beijing since his election win, three days earlier.

Also on Tuesday, the White House said in a statement that President Joe Biden “reaffirmed his steadfast support for the U.S.-Australia alliance and commitment to strengthening it further.”

Biden’s statement also alluded to China’s increased interest in the island of Taiwan, which Beijing says is part of China, saying that the U.S. president “commended Australia’s strong support for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, and the leaders agreed on the importance of continued solidarity, including to ensure that no such event is ever repeated in the Indo-Pacific.”

Albanese, a left-leaning politician from Australia’s Labor Party, pledged that if elected, he would deepen relations with the Quad and with the U.S. In his initial comments as prime minister, he described the U.S. as Australia’s “most important ally.”

Albanese also said the four Quad leaders discussed China’s increasing boldness in the Asia-Pacific region, including how to “make sure that we push our shared values in the region at a time when China is clearly seeking to exert more influence.”

Albanese’s election came after nine years of declining Sino-Australian relations under conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The relations took a further downward turn in 2021, when Chinese officials handed an Australian journalist a list of 14 grievances that Beijing allegedly had with Canberra.

The list included Australia’s foreign interference laws, decisions to ban Chinese provider Huawei from its 5G network, and siding with the U.S. “anti-China campaign” by calling for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.

In September, the U.S. announced a trilateral security partnership named “AUKUS” — for Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. That agreement included the unprecedented decision to share U.S. nuclear submarine technology with Australia, a move widely seen as a bulwark against Chinese aggression in the Pacific. As a candidate, Albanese pledged to support the AUKUS deal.

Then in April, China inked a security deal with the Solomon Islands that would allow China to “make ship visits to, carry out logistical replacement in, and have stopover and transition in the Solomon Islands” — language that raised concerns in Canberra and Washington over Beijing’s possible ambitions in the Pacific.

Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said this week that Australia has long ignored the “threat from the east that can watch and potentially target our military bases.”

“For decades we have over-estimated our influence in the Pacific; under-invested in promoting our security; and failed to appreciate China’s strategic intent,” he said in a column in The Australian, the nation’s largest national newspaper.

And former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd — a self-professed Sinophile who speaks Mandarin and who named Albanese as his deputy prime minister during his term — encouraged the new prime minister to work multilaterally to counter Beijing.

“A successful China strategy should be non-negotiable on our core values: our liberal democracy, our commitment to universal human rights and our alliance with the United States are not up for debate,” he wrote. “But we should talk less, do more, and — when we inevitably disagree with Beijing — we should always hunt in packs so that Australia cannot be easily singled out for retribution.”

Charles Edel, Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told journalists ahead of the summit that Australia has a front-row seat to China’s broader ambitions.

“Things have changed enormously across the region, and nowhere is that more true than in Australia, which has recently really been at the front of the pack on so many foreign policy and domestic decisions affecting relations with China,” he said.

But for all of this talk around and about China, a carefully worded Tuesday statement from the four Quad leaders strenuously avoided the mention of the country’s name.

“We strongly oppose any coercive, provocative or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo and increase tensions in the area, such as the militarisation of disputed features, the dangerous use of coast guard vessels and maritime militia and efforts to disrupt other countries’ offshore resource exploitation activities,” it said.

Source: Voice of America