It’s often hard work. It’s often in the face of ingrained habits of anxiety and suspicion. But Australia is steadily building closer links with that place that is in some ways its most natural partner in east Asia: Taiwan.
Rather than ‘place’, I feel tempted to write ‘country’. A few years ago, the embassy of the People’s Republic of China sent a polite and, in the end, slightly puzzled diplomat to explain to me mistakes in articles I’d written.
Foremost was that I’d referred to Taiwan as a country. I explained that readers might be perplexed as to what else to call a place that had its own constitution, elected its own leaders, printed its own money and defended its own borders.
Australians feel comfortable in Taiwan, however it’s described. It has a similarly sized population. It has an effective universal healthcare system. Visitors fly there without needing visas. Its indigenous population is about the same, proportionally—though with closer links culturally to Pacific islanders, who mostly derived from Asia via Taiwan. It was the first place in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage. It’s a comparatively egalitarian, middle-class place and generally the most socially progressive in the region. Its physical beauty mirrors that of New Zealand’s South Island, which it resembles a little topographically.
Of course, there’s a huge economic difference. Australia’s only world-leading industry is to discover, extract and export resources, which we do brilliantly. Taiwan’s is to innovate, develop and market the high-end semi-conductors used in almost every form of advanced activity and product in the world.
But that also means there’s big scope for joint endeavour, including in services, in which trade soared 50 percent in 2023. Overall, Taiwan became Australia’s sixth-biggest goods-and-services export market in 2023, while Australia became Taiwan’s fifth-largest import source. The prospects for further increases are high, with Taiwan’s GDP growth expected to reach about 4 percent for 2024. Mutual investment rose 24 percent in 2023 to $41 billion, split fairly evenly between the two, and with nine Taiwanese banks now operating in Australia, to which they have brought funds of $65 billion.
In early November, 11 Taiwanese biotech companies formed the biggest international delegation to participate in Australia’s largest life sciences conference this year, AusBiotech 2024, in Melbourne. Five of them are located at the Southern Taiwan Science Park, which coordinated the delegation.
In August, the 37th Australia-Taiwan Business Conference was held on Queensland’s Gold Coast, with more than 180 participants, almost a third from Taiwan. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘smart partnerships for a smart future’. It was organised by the Australia Taiwan Business Council, alongside its counterpart the Republic of China Australia Business Council, whose name reflects archaic pieties that Taiwan must retain to avoid being lambasted for seeking independence.
The conference featured major speakers and panels on critical minerals, energy transition, biotech, advanced manufacturing including defence and space, and cyber security. The speakers included Senator Tim Ayres, the assistant minister for trade and for a Future Made in Australia; Cameron Dick, the then deputy premier and treasurer of Queensland; and Donna Gates, the acting mayor of the Gold Coast. Three Queensland state and federal members of parliament participated, as did three parliamentarians from Taiwan.
Emerging business leaders made presentations, and plans are underway for an enhanced four-year program to build on this important network connecting young entrepreneurs and executives of Australia and Taiwan.
Next year’s conference is likely to be held in Taiwan’s lively second city, Kaohsiung, providing further opportunities for Australian businesspeople to deepen and broaden their Taiwan networks and commercial opportunities. The positive trend in the relationship would be enhanced considerably by the participation of Australia’s trade minister; it has been 12 years since a trade minister, then Craig Emerson, went to Taiwan.
Such a visit—especially if the minister is accompanied by a business delegation—would do much to further galvanise economic opportunities. Taiwan’s minister for economic affairs should also visit Australia with a business delegation.
In 2025, Australia will take the chair of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. There is therefore a strong case for Australia to encourage Taiwan to negotiate membership, and separately to negotiate a bilateral free trade agreement. However, Canberra’s overriding regional priority of stabilisation of the relationship with China makes such moves unlikely. But federally sponsored trade and investment missions—perhaps focused on areas such as biotech or green energy—would be a helpful alternative step.
In addition, a Future Made in Australia program might promisingly feature an agreement to foster the involvement of Taiwan tech companies in the development of critical minerals and rare earths processing in Australia.
Building such policy architecture would provide a helpful framework for the already promising commercial and cultural trends boosting connections between two natural regional partners.
