Angry Q&A audience member Li Shee Su slams Australia for saying China is a major security threat

An angry Q&A audience member has slammed Australia for suggesting China is a major security threat despite its aggressive behaviour towards Taiwan and its cyber sabotage.

Li Shee Su, a semi-retired IT executive, suggested concern about the Chinese Communist Party’s behaviour was misplaced because the U.S. had been more militarily assertive since the 1960s.

‘Why do we persist in labelling China as our major security threat when history strongly suggests otherwise?’ he asked on ABC’s current affairs panel program.

Mr Li argued the United States had orchestrated conflicts, citing the Vietnam and Iraq wars, as China is criticised for ignoring international law and militarising islands in the South China Sea.

‘The evidence shows that it is the US and its allies that have waged unceasing and sometimes unjustified wars,’ he said.

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‘So, who is the real threat to our security?’

Liberal Party senator and Opposition frontbencher James Paterson hit back.

‘The reason why the Chinese Communist Party is labelled as the biggest national security threat to Australia is because they are,’ he said to applause.

Senator Paterson, who holds the cyber security and countering foreign interference portfolios for the federal Opposition, said China was constantly trying to sabotage Australia’s key internet infrastructure.

‘Right now, today, we are under near constant attack in the cyber realm from the Chinese Communist Party, whether it’s the government, or our critical infrastructure,’ he said.

‘Over the last five years, we have suffered record levels of foreign interference and espionage and the Chinese government is the primary culprit of that.

‘Right now, the Chinese government is acquiring military capability at the fastest pace of any nation in the world since World War II.’ 

Mr Li cited former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s 2019 assertion the United States was the ‘most warlike nation in the history of the world’ that imposed American values on other countries. 

His downplaying of China’s aggressive stance in Asia occurred two days after its Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian coldly stated Taiwan’s 23million residents did not deserve the right to decide its future as a democratic island and there was ‘no room for compromise’.

‘The future of Taiwan will be decided by 1.4billion Chinese people,’ he said.

While Australia has maintained a nuanced one-China policy since 1972, it does not recognise China’s claim that it should run the affairs of Taiwan, a liberal and democratic island that produces a large portion of the world’s computer chips.

China’s Communist Party has not ruled over Taiwan since it came to power in 1949 but President Xi Jinping has hinted he wants to reunify Taiwan with China by 2027, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army. 

Since 1895, China has only ruled Taiwan from 1945 to 1949.

Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek and his forces fled to Taiwan after they were defeated by the Communists in a civil war.

China last week intimidated Taiwan with military exercises after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the capital, Taipei.

This made her the first Speaker to visit Taiwan since her Republican predecessor Newt Gingrich went there in 1997.

China is Australia’s biggest trading partner and the biggest buyer of iron ore exports used to make steel.