Leaders meet to work out a plan for China

A MULTINATIONAL action plan to support Taiwan and diversify supply chains away from China was expected to be finalised on Thursday, with several Australian MPs helping lead the charge.

A bipartisan delegation of Australian politicians is among more than 60 legislators from 30 countries gathered in Washington DC for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) summit.

IPAC has also been joined for the first time by a Ukrainian MP, with Oleksander Merezhko saying that “today more than ever, democracies should support each other in order to survive”.

The communique from the three-day summit is expected to map out co-ordinated global actions over the next year to respond to the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights violations and support Taiwan in the face of intensifying aggression.

Opening the summit, IPAC co-chair and US Senator Marco Rubio said he believed there was “no way that we get to the end of this decade without something happening, one way or the other, with regard to Taiwan”.

“That is a moment which threatens to be a seminal moment in human history,” he said.

“It will be a moment that will steer the course of human events for generations.”

Labor MP Peter Khalil, a co-chair of IPAC and the head of Australia’s powerful parliamentary intelligence and security committee, said it was crucial to “bring the temperature down” around Taiwan.

“No one wants to see conflict … What we want is a peaceful pathway,” he said. “Any evolution of Taiwan’s status has got to be peaceful through dialogue.”

Senator Rubio said he believed the only way to stop the Chinese government taking Taiwan by force was if the costs of action were higher than the benefits.

He called on his IPAC colleagues to commit to diversifying supply chains so their nations were not so dependent on China.

Mr Khalil is attending the summit with Labor senator Deborah O’Neill, as well as Liberal frontbenchers Andrew Hastie and James Paterson. He said IPAC played a crucial role in protecting common democratic values, warning that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “very representative of the contest right before our eyes”.

“This is really a question about what kind of world we want to live in,” he said,

Mr Merezhko said China had not been “neutral” during the invasion of his country, accusing the Chinese government of financing Russia’s war machine and providing diplomatic support at the United Nations.