Australian political leaders and strategic thinkers have, rightly, dedicated considerable attention to Hong Kong and Xinjiang in recent months. It’s time to expand the discussion to another self-declared ‘core interest’ of the Chinese Communist Party: Taiwan.

Like Australia, Taiwan is an island, a democracy, and has a population of almost 25 million. What happens to Taiwan over the next decade is fundamentally important to Australia. It will shape the extent to which the Indo-Pacific preserves space for middle-sized democracies, as well as the credibility of US alliances and whether the regional balance of power is favourable to our interests.

Recent debate in Australia has focused on how we ought to respond to an unprovoked Chinese attack against Taiwan. Important as that may be, it is a hypothetical and circumstance-dependent question we hope we never have to answer.

The more salient question, which Australian governments will be forced to confront over the next decade, is how Australia should approach Taiwan issues during peacetime, as cross-strait tensions rise and Taiwan’s security outlook becomes increasingly challenging.

At the very least, there’s every indication that Taiwan will come under immense pressure from the CCP. Beijing is using economic statecraft to limit Taiwan’s political options and making a concerted effort to try to peel away Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic allies, a list that includes Palau, Nauru and the Marshall Islands. Campaigning in the lead-up to Taiwan’s presidential election on 11 January 2020 has been marred by the CCP’s disinformation campaign and influence operations.

Political positions are hardening in Taiwan and China. Public opinion polls in Taiwan suggest an ever more independent political identity, especially among younger Taiwanese. The increasingly authoritarian nature of the CCP, its response to the Hong Kong protests, and Hong Kong’s recent election results render it highly implausible that the Taiwanese people would embrace a version of ‘one country, two systems’. Peaceful reunification with the consent of Taiwanese people therefore appears unlikely. Instead, trends in both Taiwan and China suggest a worsening cross-strait relationship over the next decade.

Against this backdrop, Taiwan will feature more prominently in Australia’s alliance with the United States and relationship with China. The CCP will continue to pressure Australia to limit our relationship with Taipei and our support for Taiwan’s participation in international forums. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats alike are adopting a tougher line on China, such as the Senate’s unanimous passage of the Hong Kong ‘Human Rights and Democracy’ bill last week. Moreover, Washington has recently taken a range of important steps to support Taiwan.

With peaceful reunification unlikely, Taiwan’s future will be shaped in part by the military balance across the Taiwan Strait. There’s no question that from the US perspective, the costs and risks of defending Taiwan are rising quickly.

Yet, even as the military balance erodes, the US and Taiwan have the capacity to continue to convince the CCP’s leaders that the costs and risks outweigh the benefits of using a military option. Canberra’s public positioning over Taiwan, insofar as it shapes Beijing’s judgements on whether we would add our forces to, and provide real estate for, a US-led operation, is a small but not insubstantial factor in how the CCP’s top leaders assess the merits of a military move against Taiwan.

Even in the event of domestic political pressures in China or Taiwan, the CCP will likely be hesitant about initiating a conflict in which victory would be far from assured. As Michael Shoebridge and Rod Lyon wrote earlier this year, ‘a swift, cheap and decisive Chinese victory would … be unlikely’.

Despite the strategic significance of Taiwan, it has received precious little attention in the Australian national discussion. The 2016 defence white paper mentions Taiwan just once, on a map showing Australia’s top 10 trading partners. The 2017 foreign policy white paper also mentions Taiwan only once, in a broad statement of Australian concerns over the ‘potential for the use of force or coercion in the East China Sea and Taiwan Strait’.

As a starting point, several issues deserve broader debate. First, should Australia take steps to help bolster Taiwan’s political links and economic resilience? One option, raised by Shoebridge, is to establish ‘direct working contacts between Australian and Taiwanese defence and national security agency officials’. Another is to revisit the idea of a free trade agreement with Taiwan, our sixth-largest merchandise export market in 2018, a proposal that was turfed in 2017–18 in response to pressure from the CCP. After all, New Zealand has a free trade deal with Taiwan (albeit signed in more benign circumstances in 2013).

Second, and relatedly, how much should Australian governments be constrained by the CCP’s inevitable objections to Taiwan-related actions it dislikes? A prime minister and foreign minister who have rightly spoken out on Hong Kong and Xinjiang could make appropriately calibrated statements on Taiwan issues.

Third, how should Australia manage the United States’ growing interest in our political orientation towards Taiwan and military real estate? Given the rapid improvements in the range and precision of PLA Rocket Force missiles, from an American perspective, operating refuelling and maritime patrol aircraft from bases in northern Australia during a Taiwan contingency would disperse US forces and thereby complicate PLA planning.

We have a lot that the US wants on Taiwan. This dynamic strengthens our bargaining position in the alliance and should spur efforts to shape US policy and manage divergent expectations for planning and collaboration during peacetime.

The best strategic future for Australia—absent peaceful resolution acceptable to both sides—is that Taiwan remains both democratic and inside the ‘one China’ framework. How much we are prepared to do to contribute to that outcome is an open question, but one that deserves far more attention.

As Australia is compelled to engage a more confrontational China, there’s a risk that political commentary and media reporting on China’s influence and interference operations in Australia could affect Chinese-Australian communities adversely.

The problem is twofold, as I explain in my new report for ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre. On one side is the Chinese party-state. Agencies of the Chinese Communist Party misrepresent and distort Australian commentary and reporting about the party’s conduct at home and abroad, its interference operations in Australia, and legitimate Australian responses to its conduct and operations. The aim is to divert or silence criticism of the party, disarm critical voices in the Chinese-Australian community, and drive a wedge between communities within Australia.

On the other side are Australian politicians and media who run the risk of alienating and possibly stigmatising Chinese-Australians through misleading claims or imprecise choices of words.

The CCP takes public diplomacy seriously, both as party and as government. Through its international propaganda arms, it has spent around A$10 billion each year over the past decade to frame what people of other countries say and write about China. The aim is to foster a positive image of China under CCP rule and curate local conversations about issues of particular concern in order to shape other governments’ policies and programs in ways that favour China’s commercial interests and long-term strategic goals.

In seeking to influence foreign opinion in its favour, China’s government resembles other governments. Foreign influence operations are an everyday part of public diplomacy and are welcomed where they’re legitimate and transparent. But public diplomacy crosses the line from legitimate influence to improper interference when it involves covert, coercive or corrupt behaviour. In Australia, such behaviour attracts legislative remedies and security responses in addition to public censure.

The Chinese government engages in a range of visible and acceptable influence operations. At the legitimate end of the spectrum, it targets people outside China through cultural agreements and exchanges, hosts public events, and supports media and print publications and educational programs. In Australia, it provides journalists with free guided trips to China, supplies schools with language learning and cultural studies textbooks, and co-funds Confucius Classrooms in state school systems and Confucius Institutes on university campuses. Those efforts often bear fruit. No other country has managed to embed its own government’s particular reading of history, politics and culture within other countries’ educational systems as effectively as the government of China.

At the improper end of the spectrum, through government and party channels, authorities based in Beijing are known to have censored Chinese-Australian community media, threatened private firms so as to limit commercial advertising in media outlets they disapprove of, made efforts to extend control over Chinese-Australian community organisations, and intimidated religious believers. Embassy and consular officials have called upon university executives to cancel events they regard as offensive. Above all, the CCP has engaged in wedge politics to undermine legitimate public debate on Chinese government policy and conduct within Australia. Similarly, the CCP isn’t alone in reaching out to diaspora communities based in other countries. Yet here the similarity ends.

The party’s united front diplomacy gives particular grounds for concern where it reaches out to people of Chinese descent regardless of citizenship, demands their loyalty to the party, and engages in covert and coercive behaviour to silence Chinese-Australians who harbour deep affection for China but none for the party.

So, what can well-meaning Australians do to help? And how can Chinese-Australian communities be enlisted as equal partners in meeting the challenges ahead?

Australians who are concerned that public conversations about China’s influence and interference operations in Australia could adversely affect Chinese-Australian communities can help mitigate risks by heeding the many voices to be heard among those communities, by cultivating respect among all Australians for minority rights and freedoms, by working for greater minority inclusion in senior positions and peak bodies and councils, and by taking the time to be more thoughtful about what they say and how and where they say it. My report offers a few pointers on how this can be done.

While the risks of fanning anti-Chinese racism through criticism of Chinese government behaviour are real, so are the challenges arising from a foreign government exploiting sensitivities over ethnic identity and cohesion in Australia’s multicultural society as a cover for interference in public life and community affairs.

Both sets of risks require Australia’s education systems and civil society to deal sensitively with intercultural issues and require Australia’s diplomatic and political representatives to defend Australian national interests in ways that don’t jeopardise the social standing of minority communities or damage social harmony. The ongoing challenge from a more confident and confrontational government in China will require firm and principled approaches from Australians for many years to come, expressed in clear and unambiguous language.

Not for the first time, Australia is wrestling with the stance it wants to (or needs to) adopt towards the People’s Republic of China. Our economic wellbeing is more strongly linked to China than are most other economies in the world, and that link is stronger than it has been with our primary economic partners in the past—the UK and Japan. Moreover, this correlation isn’t going to weaken over the foreseeable future and, if it weakens too abruptly, the pain will be intense. For some time now, China has pressed us to translate this compelling economic association into something deeper at the political and societal level.

Australia’s national interests point quite unambiguously to being proactive in seeking the closest and most constructive relationship with China that we can get. Relationships of trust and confidence between states develop from openness and transparency (about feelings and interests, about assessments and evaluations of third parties and international events and developments, about decision-making processes and so on) and from both sides finding that reciprocity to be rewarding and reassuring.

More often than not, the development of an international relationship will involve agreement to collaborate in the pursuit of a shared interest—whether bilaterally or in some multilateral context like the UN—and these experiences feed into the confidence that each side has about the other’s compatibility and dependability. In short, the character of an international relationship depends on how strongly the parties share values and interests, on how determined each side is to build and sustain a close relationship, and on how prepared each side is to expose itself to the other.

At the heart of our problem with China—a problem shared by many states—is that China craves close relationships but on the condition that partners accept that its governance procedures are off limits. It is access to and insights on precisely these procedures that constitute the essence of diplomacy and provide the foundation for other states to make confident judgements about the merits of a deeper relationship. And only when such access and insights build strong confidence will states judge that an especially close relationship is worthwhile.

China’s current communist government came to power in 1949 after two decades of civil war, that is, by force of arms. It promulgated a new constitution that made the CCP the government of China in perpetuity, emphatically resuming a tradition of authoritarian governance (headed by an emperor) that stretched back at least 2,500 years, but without the legitimacy that in the past flowed from the institution of the emperor.

The CCP is a historically new blend of China’s imperial tradition, Confucianism and socialism. Perhaps the single most conspicuous feature of the Chinese system of governance is the absolute priority attached to the state’s monopoly control over access to knowledge about what the state has done, is doing and plans to do. That imperative applies just as forcefully to Chinese citizens as it does to foreigners. This posture, which now extends to the internet and social media, is intended to ensure that the CCP is the sole voice speaking for China.

To the CCP, the notion of checks and balances on the power of the state—whether done through a parliament, a free press, an independent judiciary or an informed public—is anathema. It contradicts the very essence of the party’s philosophy of governance. As it lacks the legitimacy provided by elections or the mythology that attended the imperial system, and since aspiring to the goals of socialism lost its cache, the CCP has been left to justify its perpetuity by claiming to provide something approaching perfection—the best imaginable governance. And the CCP strives to have in place the controls needed to ensure that no evidence or opinions to the contrary can be found.

The closed and closely guarded nature of China’s internal affairs is a deep-seated characteristic, a contemporary compulsion reinforced by cultural traits rather than a posture that China adopts for tactical reasons. Now that the country is strong once again, the CCP seeks to leverage China’s weight to require other governments to not directly or indirectly undercut its claim to governance at its best. In a manner of speaking, China seeks to ensure that the what, when, how and why of the state’s activities are not independently verifiable, requiring interested parties—Chinese citizens as much as foreigners—to rely exclusively on the narrative provide by the state.

The Chinese government may be unaware that its domestic circumstances drive it towards a style of engagement that other states find overbearing and that makes maintaining stable relationships that much harder. That seems unlikely, however. It’s more likely that it is seen as inescapable and the only way to get away with it is to present it as a normal and necessary part of reaping the benefits of a ‘good relationship’ with China.

That’s a tough ask, especially, perhaps, for democracies. Even if another state is disposed to skate over the more troubling aspects of Chinese internal practices, the asymmetry in transparency makes it doubly hard. China’s insistence that other states be content with whatever information the CCP chooses to divulge is tantamount to handicapping—inviting them to cope with a damaging imbalance in the capacity to make informed judgements about intentions and goals, about what is driving positions on particular issues, and about the scope to shift those positions.

This may, in fact, be the true source of the profound difficulties with the international order that are now being exposed. The so-called rules-based order may or may not be biased towards Western values, but it does presume the prevalence of states that view government and governance as both indispensable and dangerous, with the latter characteristic managed by checks and balances on the power of the state.

Now that an actor has emerged that is both an economic powerhouse and doesn’t accept that the state can be too powerful—holding instead that the state must be all powerful—we may have an actor with a decisive competitive edge over its democratic rivals. One way or another, a lot of the future is going to be driven by attempts to restore a level playing field.