Taiwan has for decades singlehandedly borne the brunt of a revanchist, ultra-nationalist China — until now.
Ever since Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had the temerity to call for a transparent, international investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing has been turning the screws on Canberra. This has included unleashing aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomats to intimidate Australian policymakers, enacting punitive tariffs on its exports, and threatening an embargo on Chinese tourists and students to the nation.
A tense situation became more serious on June 19 after Morrison revealed that a “sophisticated state-based actor” — read: China — had launched a large-scale cyberattack against Australia, targeting all levels of government, political organizations, essential service providers and critical infrastructure.
It is not the first time that Australia has been targeted by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Unit 61398 cyberwarfare group. In September last year, Reuters said Australian intelligence had found that China was responsible for a hacking attack on the Australian parliament and three of its largest political parties prior to the general election in May that year.
However, the range and depth of the latest attack have unnerved Canberra. Beijing has shown that it is willing to launch an offensive cyberattack as a means to coerce a foreign nation on a scale that many Western intelligence analysts had hitherto assumed would only be employed during a wartime scenario.
In response, Canberra on Tuesday announced that it would spend A$1.35 billion (US$935 million) over the next decade in cyberweapons and defenses, as well as recruit at least 500 additional cyberspies. It is the largest investment that the Australian government has ever made in such capabilities.
In addition to the cyberthreat, Beijing has also been using old-fashioned espionage to influence Australia’s domestic politics. The latest case to rock the nation occurred on Friday last week when New South Wales state opposition lawmaker Shaoquett Moselmane’s home and office were raided by Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO). The media has said the ASIO believes that Moselmane’s office might have been infiltrated by Chinese government agents — but there is reason to be suspicious.
The Australian Labour Party politician has been spouting Beijing’s propaganda for many years. In a 2018 speech, Moselmane said: “The only way for China to reach its potential is for China to force a change to the rules and create the new world order.”
Moselmane has also praised Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for his “tough, unswerving leadership” during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in a Feb. 5 opinion piece for East China Normal University, he wrote that the “obsolete scum of white Australia” were responsible for anti-China sentiment in the country.
Even more damning, Moselmane, who has made nine privately funded trips to China, last year appointed Chinese national John Zhang (張智森) as a staffer and speechwriter. Zhang is known to have completed a Chinese Communist Party propaganda training course in Beijing and is believed to be a “united front” agent.
In a sign that Canberra believes China poses an unprecedented threat, Morrison on Wednesday announced that Australia would over the next 10 years increase its defense budget by 40 percent.
Speaking to the media, Morrison said: “We have not seen the conflation of global economic and strategic uncertainty now being experienced here in Australia, in our region, since the existential threat we faced when the global and regional order collapsed in the 1930s and 1940s.”
Australia has finally woken up and realized the grim reality that, through no choice of its own, it is now at war with China. Welcome to the club.
Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) led a bipartisan delegation to Taiwan in late February. During their various meetings with Taiwan’s leaders, this delegation never missed an opportunity to emphasize the strength of their cross-party consensus on issues relating to Taiwan and China. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi are leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Their instruction upon taking the reins of the committee was to preserve China issues as a last bastion of bipartisanship in an otherwise deeply divided Washington. They have largely upheld their pledge. But in doing so, they have performed the
It is well known that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) ambition is to rejuvenate the Chinese nation by unification of Taiwan, either peacefully or by force. The peaceful option has virtually gone out of the window with the last presidential elections in Taiwan. Taiwanese, especially the youth, are resolved not to be part of China. With time, this resolve has grown politically stronger. It leaves China with reunification by force as the default option. Everyone tells me how and when mighty China would invade and overpower tiny Taiwan. However, I have rarely been told that Taiwan could be defended to
It should have been Maestro’s night. It is hard to envision a film more Oscar-friendly than Bradley Cooper’s exploration of the life and loves of famed conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. It was a prestige biopic, a longtime route to acting trophies and more (see Darkest Hour, Lincoln, and Milk). The film was a music biopic, a subgenre with an even richer history of award-winning films such as Ray, Walk the Line and Bohemian Rhapsody. What is more, it was the passion project of cowriter, producer, director and actor Bradley Cooper. That is the kind of multitasking -for-his-art overachievement that Oscar
Chinese villages are being built in the disputed zone between Bhutan and China. Last month, Chinese settlers, holding photographs of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), moved into their new homes on land that was not Xi’s to give. These residents are part of the Chinese government’s resettlement program, relocating Tibetan families into the territory China claims. China shares land borders with 15 countries and sea borders with eight, and is involved in many disputes. Land disputes include the ones with Bhutan (Doklam plateau), India (Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin) and Nepal (near Dolakha and Solukhumbu districts). Maritime disputes in the South China