Scott Morrison has championed the AUKUS alliance as the tool to counter China’s attempt to “reshape” the world as he warned the region must not bow down to Beijing’s coercion.
Mr Morrison has skipped the opening of parliament this week to speak at the Global Opinion Leaders Summit in Tokyo where he called for cooperation to counter China’s spread in the region.
“ is an initiative, combined with AUKUS, that has had the most profound impact on the strategic balance within the Indo-Pacific since the PRC started turning atolls into airports in the South China Sea,” he said on Thursday. “Over the last decade, the PRC has increasingly attempted to reshape our region, and the world, in a way more conducive to autocracies than liberal democracies.
“It is the nature and terms of this engagement with China that matter. This must mean engagement that respects, reinforces and is bound by our rules-based order, not one that seeks to or allows China to redefine these rules to suit the relativist agenda of autocracies,” he continued. China has consistently expressed concerns over the AUKUS agreement, calling the security pact a “typical military bloc” and accusing Australia, the US and the UK of “stoking division and inciting confrontation”.
“No matter how hard they try to justify themselves, the three countries cannot alter the basic fact that their cooperation comes with serious nuclear proliferation risks,” spokesman Zhao Lijian said at his regular daily press conference.
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