Xi Jinping has been 'telling us' what China is planning for Taiwan

i've got a very special guest now jim mullen joins us and we have two big stories coming out of asia today the first one i want to talk about is something which jim mullen's been warning us about for for a while now the possibility of war between china and taiwan jim on this show said that war was years down the line but perhaps it's going to be sooner than we thought the foreign minister of taiwan has said that the island is preparing for invasion and experts agree saying that uh china wants to reclaim taiwan as a key to securing uh his legacy jim how scared are you of war happening imminently china is on the march and what is australia going to do what's america going to do yes good evening rita to say that we're frightened i think is is a very important point the problem i've got is we're not frightened enough and we know what china will do because president xi has kept on telling us and we've been ignoring authoritarian rulers over the last 100 years to our costs they tend to tell you exactly what they want to do and we don't believe it so maybe regardless of how frightened we are maybe we should be a lot more frightened there is a pattern of coercion and aggression here that is getting worse and worse and worse over the last four days roughly 150 air incursions have occurred between the chinese mainland and taiwan in what's called an air defense identification zone which is not the national airspace of taiwan but it is an internationally agreed identification site and the reason that china is doing it is to tell america and taiwan that china sets the rules in that part of the world and this is something that we'd better start getting used to we don't know when it's going to happen when they will move on taiwan but what we do know sadly rita is that it's not going to be geographically limited to that little island of taiwan and the straits and the the chinese mainland because china would be stupid to actually just attack taiwan because that then leads the americans to do what they do and what china really must do and this has deep uh consequences for us what china has got to do it's got to force america out of the western pacific and then it can deal very easily with taiwan the way it does that is by attacking american bases in japan in south korea and in guam and it's not just me saying it it's not just us saying it it is the american commanders who are saying it admitting that they cannot in the war games that they play win the taiwan scenario now if that doesn't make us all in ours brighton rita i don't know what does well yeah that sounds bloody terrifying and we've seen how disastrously the us handled the afghanistan withdrawal that completely botched that uh can we rely on them to to stand up for liberty and democracy here uh you're saying that they're saying their generals are telling them that they're wouldn't be able to stand up to the might of china so what's what's next if if they can't stand up for the free world what's the next step for china after taiwan well uh i i think that if if the scenario that i see is militarily logical that is china firstly uh attacks everything that we have in space it attacks us cyber wise it then attacks those bases i've spoken about because of the size of the pacific ocean there is very little that america can do china has the ability to attack those bases and it has the ability to attack a fleet there is a strategy behind all of this but we focus for very good reasons on two things when we look at foreign countries and the afghanistan failure is indicative of this we we focus on the intent of a country and that's what everyone focused on after afghanistan they said well would they will the americans do it and we don't know what the americans will do if the americans don't believe that they can satisfactorily resolve a taiwan scenario that is in some way shape or form the chinese moving on taiwan directly or indirectly why would they do it because they're going to get beaten and so that's intent and if they if they don't stand up for taiwan because they've been saying so long they will if they don't stand up to taiwan for taiwan uh then china is the dominant force in this region and my fear is that south east asia will turn towards taiwan and little old us will have to pull out those 14 conditions that the chinese told us we should observe and maybe that's the end of democratic australia but the second thing it's not just intent it's capability the american armed forces have reduced by 30 to 50 percent maybe not in their numbers or anything like that but in what they can do and numbers are irrelevant and military it's what they can do and the american military in what they can do has decreased 30 to 50 since the end of the cold war and of course we are we have a a one-shot military which lacks lethality it lacks sustainability and it's not big enough oh jim everything you say is terrifying i don't mind saying absolutely terrifying but enormously important now that second story i want to uh ask you about is china might come crawling back to australia for our coal after banning australian coal to to punish us for wanting to know the origins of the covert 19 outbreak uh what should we do here jim should we accommodate them or should we play tough well i think we should sell everything we can to china iron ore coal anything they want to sell as long as we put the money that we make from it international security but we don't we will sell whatever we like to china uh and then god knows where the money will go we've just spent 331 billion dollars on covert and i you know i'm not complaining about that much but what i'm worried about that is that could have gone to a range of things which meant that we could be self-reliant in relation to a change of power in our part of the world the biggest problem though rita is that yes they might come crawling back to us but they've just announced the opening of a bridge across the amur river in western china on the border between russia and uh and china so that russian coal and iron ore by christmas time by the end of this year can be brought into the steel making places in western china and this is the reason that they give for it so they are no longer dependent on australia so yeah we might we might do i mean we're doing fabulously well at the moment had a call if we can sell some more i'd be very happy i'll sell it to anyone as long as we use the money to become self-reliant as a nation and to build up our resilience jim mullen always wonderful to hear your insights thanks for joining us tonight thanks rita thank you

Channel: Sky News Australia

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Id: xnE7H6kP62A

Length: 7min 55sec (475 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021