Anna Fifield: We must stand up for our values, we must stand up for Taiwan

Anna Fifield is the editor of the Dominion Post and was the Washington Post’s Beijing bureau chief until September 2020.

OPINION: A geopolitical crisis is coming to the boil to our north, and it’s one that could have significant economic, diplomatic and even military implications for New Zealand.

As widely telegraphed, Nancy Pelosi, the US speaker of the House of Representatives and the third-highest official in the United States, arrived in Taiwan overnight New Zealand time, against a backdrop of shrill warnings from China and more muted ones from the Pentagon.

Pelosi will on Wednesday give a televised speech at the legislature in Taipei, meet President Tsai Ing-wen at the Presidential Office Building and have lunch with her, hold a news conference, and then meet democracy advocates before leaving on Wednesday evening.

This is the kind of itinerary that would be standard in any other country, but in Taiwan – which the Chinese Communist Party considers a breakaway province that should be reunited with the “motherland”, despite the fact Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China – could spark a military conflict, by miscalculation, if not by design.

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Beijing has already started responding. It has suspended imports from 35 Taiwanese exporters of biscuits and pastries since Monday, and a cyber attack now appears to be underway. It has brought forward military exercises, and is now practising blockades, land and maritime attacks, and air control operations.

In Xiamen, the closest part of the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, People’s Liberation Army tanks have been rolling along the beaches – while children continue to play in the water, no less.

As Taylor Fravel, an influential MIT expert on Chinese security issues, has warned, China “will likely believe it needs to restore its credibility and bolster its red lines over Taiwan”.

The visit comes after United States President Joe Biden made repeated unequivocal gaffes about militarily defending Taiwan, sparking concern in Beijing about changes in the United States’ “One China” policy.

This is where we come in. Since 1972, New Zealand has recognised Beijing’s “One China” policy – the Communist Party’s requirement for having diplomatic relations with the world’s second-largest economy.

This policy is often misconstrued as meaning that countries like New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the US recognise that Taiwan is part of China. This is not correct. It means only that we recognise that China considers Taiwan to be part of its territory.

It’s a threading of a diplomatic needle that has allowed countries like ours to have diplomatic and economic relations with China, while also having strong if unofficial relations with the vibrant and robust democracy that is Taiwan.

But it’s a needle that’s becoming increasingly difficult to thread as the Chinese Communist Party under leader Xi Jinping has laid bare its true aims.

It has stripped Hong Kong, a key financial hub for New Zealand businesses, of almost all its democratic freedoms; it has committed cultural genocide in Xinjiang; has militarised islands across the South China Sea with impunity; and is now seeking to extend its reach into the Pacific, our neighbourhood.

There is now almost no freedom of speech or assembly or religion in China. Lawyers, independent academics, human rights activists, religious leaders, journalists – they are all unwelcome as Xi pursues his “China Dream” to restore China to what he sees as its rightful place at the top of the global order. That’s one of the key reasons I chose to leave China at the end of 2020.

Taiwan, on the other hand, is a pluralistic democracy with a robust opposition – so robust there are still occasionally fist-fights in the parliament – and a dynamic civil society.

After a decade of laserlike focus on China’s 1.4 billion-strong consumer market, mostly under John Key’s National-led government, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government is increasingly recognising the threat of the Chinese Communist Party.

The prime minister is still careful to try to accentuate the positive – there are still plenty of areas where China and New Zealand can co-operate even “as China becomes more assertive in the pursuit of its interests”, she said at a China business forum this week, the red and yellow flag of Communist China emblazoned on the screen behind her.

But as push comes to shove, we will increasingly have to balance our economic interests with our democratic values.

Taiwanese people, like Ukrainians, are fighting for us and our values. They’re fighting for democracy in the face of authoritarianism.

With Russia, it’s been relatively easy to stand up for our values. Russia sits at 27th place in a list of our biggest trading partners. China sits at number one, accounting for a full third of our exports.

But we should have no qualms about where our values lie. In the last two weeks alone, European, Japanese and Australian delegations have visited Taiwan. Pelosi is there now, and a British parliamentary mission is planned.

Where are we? Ardern has sidestepped questions about Taiwan. Our foreign minister – nominally at least – Nanaia Mahuta hasn’t uttered a peep.

We do not exist in the world only as a trading nation. Our outsized standing on the global stage is connected to our steadfast commitment to multilateralism and human rights and democracy. We must stand up, loud and clear, for that.