Last Sunday, the head of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, addressed the party’s 20th national congress in Beijing. In dense jargon, Xi spoke for two hours on the party’s achievements and its challenges in …
Articles by: "Mark Harrison"
The smoke has cleared from China’s military exercises in the Taiwan Strait last month, and the sequence of events highlights some of the realities of the regional security outlook. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited …
The visit to Taiwan by a US congressional delegation led by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has once again pushed the Taiwan Strait to the front of international attention. It shows Taiwan’s …
Last weekend’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore was the first since 2019 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which seemed to make the event cathartic for pent-up tensions in the international system. Taiwan was a major topic …
Russia’s terrible invasion of Ukraine is looming over the Indo-Pacific with its lessons for Taiwan’s relations with China. Some of those lessons are important reality checks. Assumptions about a nominally superior military force have been …
On 18 December, Taiwanese voters went to the polls to vote on four referendum questions. Referendums have sometimes been a contentious aspect of Taiwan’s democratic system. Their provision is in the Republic of China constitution, …
On Wednesday, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating fronted the National Press Club in Canberra to present a critique of Australian foreign and defence policy and his take on the strategic outlook. He offered a …
The 10th of October marked the anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, the 1911 military insurrection in the city of Wuhan against the Qing imperial government. Coming after years of activism for reform and revolution, the …
In this month’s AUSMIN statement, somewhat overshadowed by AUKUS and Australia’s decision to purchase nuclear-powered submarines, was a notably robust paragraph about Taiwan. The statement used new phraseology, describing Taiwan as ‘a leading democracy and …
Australia has passed through a baffling period in public and policy debate on China–Taiwan relations. It has been prompted by a tactical step by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force over the last 12 months …
This month in Beijing, the so-called two sessions of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference convened to formalise a range of policy goals for China’s economic development, environmental management, law, …
On 9 January, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rescinded a range of restrictions on US government interaction with the government of Taiwan. These restrictions had been in place, with periodic revisions, since the US …