There can be little doubt that Australia is entering the same kind of misinformation domain as the US. Just a few days ago, failed presidential hopeful Nikki Haley posted on X that UN Resolution 2758 doesn’t mention Taiwan.
Reading the resolution, it’s correct, the Island of Taiwan doesn’t get a mention, but that’s where the disinformation starts. What does get a mention is that the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek would be expelled forthwith from the places they “unlawfully occupy” in the United Nations. The representatives of Chiang Kai-shek are the representatives of the Republic of China and the Republic of China is housed in Taiwan.
It’s hard to get any clearer than that. But for those people who want to revise history, it’s always a good place to start at the beginning of any negotiation between two parties and, the first answer to the Taiwan question is when Mao, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger met to discuss normalising relations. The most difficult question to arise out of the normalisation was the position in relation to Taiwan. An island province, which had been agreed in the Cairo Declaration, would be returned to China after World War II, having been under years of Japanese, Dutch and Portuguese colonisation.
So, the wording that Nixon signed in a joint declaration, held in US archives, is very important. It states: “The Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China; Taiwan is a province of China which has long been returned to the motherland; the liberation of Taiwan is China’s internal affair in which no other country has the right to interfere; and all US forces and military installations must be withdrawn from Taiwan.”
Some might argue that Nixon signed under duress. He needed China’s help to overcome Russia and he desperately wanted to extricate his country from the war in Vietnam that he had escalated into Cambodia and Laos without losing face. He knew what he had to do, he had to give China what it wanted, and he did so willingly.
Now, Australians are facing a revision of history, Australian Senate members of a US funded alliance called IPAC, the Inter Parliamentary Alliance on China have presented Australia’s Senate with a revision of the UN Resolution and a call to have it overturned.
There are two factors to consider here. One is that, if Australia wants to alienate its largest and most important trading partner, there is no better way to do so than entertain, at a parliamentary level, a process that will undoubtedly cross the only red line that China has indicated to the world – Taiwan is part of China, it is inseparable from China and it will be defended. Therefore, Australia risks two things: one is an increasingly reluctant trading partner which is certain to look for alternative markets, thus leaving Australia in increasingly difficult financial circumstances. Some may view that as a threat, but loss of business is the reality of upsetting your biggest client. The other problem is that it will cause instability in the region. Any claims that Taiwan does not belong to China will result in Beijing doing what it believes it must do to defend its sovereign territory.
If Australia is looking for these two conditions to occur, then this is a surefire way of achieving them. This situation is not helped by biased ABC reporting which fails to consider the alternative position, even to the point of amplifying this misinformation that it’s China attempting to change the position that has been held by the UN on Resolution 2758 since 1971. For the record, China has made no statement whatsoever to change the understanding of the resolution.
In fairness to Australia, it was one of the 35 countries to support the US stance and vote No to the resolution, but that doesn’t change the fact that 76 countries voted Yes and the UN, for all its flaws, is a democratic institution. Australia has no right now to enter the fray with a change of heart, especially one which is sponsored, supported and financially funded by regime change experts in the National Endowment for Democracy, the founding CEO of which is noted for admitting that much of what they do was done covertly by the CIA before they were founded. In other words, an admitted CIA cut-out organisation known for funding destabilisation.
It’s too early to tell what China’s reaction to this will be, but there is little doubt that one of the tools available to Beijing is very simple – to take its business elsewhere. Australia currently relies on China as the largest buyer of several important resources. iron ore being the largest by a long way. Total outgoing trade with China was more than $US120 billion in 2023 with a total of 41% of all exports going to China.
It’s easy for many Australians to suggest that “shared values” with the US mean they must side with that country, but realities make for a very different scenario. The US accounts for just 4.3% of Australia’s exports, no other country comes close, Japan is nearest with only 12% of Australia’s exports and declining. There isn’t another market for Australia to expand into; China is, by a long way, the most important market we have and we are poking it in the eye over what Paul Keating correctly calls “not a vital Australian interest”.
China has never expressed aggressive intentions towards Taiwan, it has repeatedly maintained it is prepared to wait, but will never rule out force to defend Taiwan if others feel they can take it away from the 1.4 billion people who view the island as a province which is and will always remain part of China.
This is what was agreed by Nixon in 1971, Carter in 1978 and Reagan in 1982. It was agreed by the United Nations and accepted by Australia in 1971. Researching back though, we see it all started to change in April this year; after more than 50 years since the resolution was passed, there are accusations that China is only now misinterpreting it. Yet China hasn’t made any statements. With NED support from Washington DC, Australia is rewriting history and Nikki Haley is amplifying it.
Jerry Grey is a former British Police officer who was a general manager in a multi-national security company based in Australia for 17 years. He has lived, worked, travelled extensively and studied in China for almost two decades. He holds a Master Degree in cross cultural change management. Jerry Grey is a freelance writer living in Southern China's Guangdong province.
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