Ex-PM Scott Morrison says China can be a democracy
Days after China lifted its ban on Australian wine and signalled a strengthening of ties between the countries, ex-PM Scott Morrison has offered his views on the future of Australia’s biggest trade partner.
Morrison told a Canberra-based podcast that China could become a multiparty democracy and that the Chinese people had no “anti-democratic” instinct.
Ex-prime minister Scott Morrison.Credit: James Brickwood
Morrison, who led Australia from 2018 to 2022, said the Chinese people “care just as much about freedom as we do” but “sadly in mainland China they don’t have the opportunity for it”.
“There’s a view that some put around that, ‘oh, you know, democracy can’t work in Chinese culture’,” Morrison said on the podcast. “Well, that’s crap. I’ve been to Taiwan.”
Taiwan has been under self-rule since 1949, but Beijing considers the democratic island as part of its own territory.
Morrison was PM during a difficult period for relations between China and Australia.
Following Morrison’s April 2020 call for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19, Beijing placed trade restrictions on lucrative Australian exports such as wine, barley, and coal. The punitive tariffs on wine shipments only ended this week.
Morrison’s latest remarks come after a visit from China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi marked the end of the wine ban, which was widely seen as a sign of Beijing’s displeasure with Canberra over his comments four years ago. While the resumption of Chinese imports of Australian barley and wine has been met with approval, other issues between the countries remain.
In February, China handed a suspended death sentence to Australian academic Yang Hengjun, who has been detained there since 2019. Australia has also criticised China’s coercive actions in the South China Sea, persistent cyberattacks and efforts at foreign interference operations aimed at Australia.
