The bathymetric profile of 🇨🇳’s seaboard via Geoscience Australia.

Gives a sense of why 🇨🇳 might want to get its SSBNs on Hainan to the deeper waters of the northern South China Sea & why 🇦🇺’s AUKUS SSNs might be used to (among others things) help track 🇨🇳’s SSBNs there.

🇹🇼🤷‍♂️

Two Australian icons

🇦🇺’s Treasury Wine Estates (ASX:TWE) reached a more than 6-month high after 🇨🇳’s interim draft determination on wine duties.

Seems likely to bump up again in the coming days w/ 🇨🇳 all but certain to announce plans for removal of wine duties before 31 March.

NB I don’t hold TWE.

🇦🇺 says it hasn't engaged in quid pro quo compromises w/ 🇨🇳.

But 🇨🇳 tells a different story that links 🇦🇺's decisions/findings on Darwin Port & wind towers to 🇨🇳's removal of trade restrictions.

NB it's possible this is a face-saving explanation from 🇨🇳.
au.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/dshd/202...

From the Politburo's December 'criticism and self-criticism meeting':
"The whole Party, the entire military, and the people must ... uphold General Secretary Xi Jinping's core position on the CPC Central Committee and in the Party as a whole ..."
www.idcpc.org.cn/english/even...

🇦🇺 Ambo Graham Fletcher having a farewell call w/ 🇨🇳 Vice FM Ma Zhaoxu.

Fletcher has been in the post since Aug. '19, handling the most contentious & tumultuous period in the history of 🇦🇺-🇨🇳 relations (w/ the possible exception of the post-'89 period).

www.mfa.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbx...

The “red team” is (unsurprisingly) blue in the latest PLA Navy promotional video (though I assume that colour coding isn’t new):
eng.mod.gov.cn/xb/Home/Focu...

Despite 🇨🇳's disinformation efforts, 🇦🇺's 1-China policy doesn't preclude 🇦🇺 stepping up engagement w/ 🇹🇼.

As well as serving 🇦🇺's interests, such trade & political engagement wouldn't be unusual.

🇳🇿 + 🇸🇬 have FTAs w/ 🇹🇼 & 🇩🇪 + 🇬🇧 have sent ministers to visit recently.

🇦🇺 has also held back from legitimate political engagement w/ 🇹🇼.

Previously, 🇦🇺 ministers & junior ministers regularly visited 🇹🇼.

There were at least 16 trips between 1993 & 2012—on average nearly 1 p/a.

Since 2012, no 🇦🇺 minister or junior minister has publicly visited 🇹🇼.

🇹🇼 is 1 of 🇦🇺's top trade partners. In 2022, 🇹🇼 was 🇦🇺's:
➡️no. 4 goods export market
➡️no. 6 export market overall
➡️no. 7 two-way trading partner

Yet 🇹🇼 is the only 1 of 🇦🇺's top 10 export markets with which it doesn't have a bilat FTA or shared membership of a regional FTA.

Definitely not Canberra

Some smiles in Beijing

It seems (I think?) to have gone largely unremarked in the press, but Taiwan's National Science & Technology Council Minister Wu Tsung-tsong recently (23-26 Oct.) visited Australia.

Here he is visiting Australia's Department of Industry, Science and Resources:
taiwantoday.tw/news.php?uni...

As seen at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

Just touched down in Taipei. I guess Taiwanese interest has been piqued?