Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday said that his government held a less dramatic view of US-China strategic tensions than a predecessor who warned of a potential “hot war” before the US presidential election in November.
Former Australian prime minister and China academic Kevin Rudd wrote in Foreign Affairs this week that the risk of armed conflict between the US and China in the next three months was “especially high.”
Morrison said his administration had expressed similar views in a defense policy update last month.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Our defense update expresses it differently and certainly not as dramatically as Kevin, but in our own defense update, we’ve acknowledged that what was previously inconceivable and not considered even possible or likely in terms of those types of outcomes is not considered in those contexts anymore,” Morrison told the Aspen Security Forum in an online address from the Australian capital, Canberra.
Meanwhile, Australian federal police raided the home and office of a man employed by an Australian politician as part of a foreign interference investigation into whether he was working to advance “Chinese state interests,” court documents showed.
The disclosure is made in documents lodged on Monday in Australia’s High Court by the employee, John Zhang (張智森), who is seeking to quash the search warrants used by police and the return of seized computer evidence.
Zhang, who could not be reached for comment, has not been charged with any offense.
His lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment yesterday.
The documents said that Zhang is an Australian citizen who migrated from China in 1989 and had been employed by New South Wales state politician Shaoquett Moselmane since 2018.
Moselmane, who has been suspended from the NSW Labor party following the raids, has previously said he had not done anything wrong and was not a suspect.
According to details of the search warrants described in the court documents, Zhang was under investigation for allegedly concealing from Moselmane that he was acting on behalf of, or in collaboration with, the “Chinese state and party apparatus including the Ministry of State Security and the United Front Work Department.”
The documents said it was alleged that Zhang was suspected of acting on behalf of the “Chinese state and party apparatus” in a private social media chat group with Moselmane to advance the policy goals of the Chinese government.
He is alleged to have encouraged Moselmane to advocate for “Chinese state interests”, they said.
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
RSS