TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Chinese embassy in Australia issued a histrionic statement on Saturday (Oct. 9) following former Prime Minister Tony Abbot's visit to Taiwan, according to reports.
Abbot, who came to Taiwan in a personal capacity last week, met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and other luminaries. He urged Australia to “do everything it can” to support Taiwan and warned that a China with a slowing economy could be liable to “lash out disastrously very soon.”
"Our challenge is to try and ensure that the unthinkable remains unlikely and that the possible does not become the probable," he said, per the ABC.
In response, the Chinese embassy in Canberra posted a denunciation on its website, saying, “Tony Abbot is a failed and pitiful politician. His recent despicable and insane performance in Taiwan fully exposed his hideous anti-China features. This will only further discredit him.”
Speaking at a regional conference in Taipei on Friday, Abbot had addressed the full suite of concerns facing the international community in its relations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
"It's boosted cyber spying on its own citizens, canceled popular personalities in favor of a cult of the red emperor, brutalized Indian soldiers in the Himalayas, coerced other claimants in its eastern seas and flown ever more intimidatory sorties against Taiwan," he said, according to the Australian broadcaster.
In addition to touching on issues related to the Uyghurs and Hong Kong, Abbot went on to discuss the badly damaged trade relationship between China and Australia.
"It's weaponized trade — especially against Australia — with our barley, wine and coal exports all stopped on spurious grounds," he said. "And its embassy has published 14 demands, essentially that we become a tributary state, that no self-respecting country could accept,” per the report.
"The trigger for all this was politely seeking an impartial inquiry into the origins of the virus," he added. At a press conference later on Friday, Abbot described Taiwan as a “wonderful country” before revising his word choice to a “wonderful place.”
“It’s very easy to fall into these little traps, isn’t it?” he quipped, in a seeming acknowledgment of the absurdity of having to make the revision.
