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Taiwan's de facto embassy in Canberra has heaped praise on Australia after the Senate passed a bipartisan motion criticising China's attempts to use a 50-year-old UN resolution to claim Taiwan as part of its territory.
China's government has consistently tried to use UN Resolution 2758 — which recognises the People's Republic of China as the "only legitimate representative of China to the UN" — to advance its claim that it has sovereignty over the self-ruled island of Taiwan.
It has also repeatedly claimed that Australia accepts that Taiwan is merely a province of China, an argument which Australia rejects.
Under the agreement signed by both countries when they established diplomatic ties Australia recognised the PRC as the sole government of China but only "acknowledged" China's claim that Taiwan is part of its territory.
And on Wednesday evening the Senate passed a motion moved by Liberal senator David Fawcett and the ALP's Deborah O'Neill which said UN Resolution 2758 "does not establish the People's Republic of China's sovereignty over Taiwan and does not determine the future status of Taiwan in the UN".
The motion also says the resolution doesn't prevent Taiwan from participating in UN organisations and agencies.
Both Senator Fawcett and Senator O'Neill travelled to Taiwan earlier this year for a conference organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which agreed to condemn Beijing's use of Resolution 2758 to push the One China Principle and claim full sovereignty over Taiwan.
In a statement, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canberra said that Australia's parliament was the first to publicly back the new IPAC initiative.
"We are especially grateful to Australia for showing strong leadership in being the first to take a definitive stand against authoritarian attempts to bully and isolate Taiwan," it said.
"China's efforts to subvert the language of the resolution to make false claims of sovereignty over Taiwan are unacceptable.
"We applaud the efforts of our fellow free democracies to push back against such blatant and irresponsible disinformation."
The move is likely to draw furious condemnation from China, which criticised senators O'Neill and Fawcett for travelling to Taiwan earlier this year, calling the island "an inalienable part of China's territory".
"The One China Principle is the universal consensus of the international community and the bedrock of the political foundation of China-Australia relations," the Chinese Embassy said.
During the debate, Senator O'Neill told the Senate that Australia's commitments to China did not mean it backed Beijing's attempts to lock out Taiwan from the UN and other international organisations.
"Australia has long supported Taiwan's meaningful participation in international organisations," she said.
"It is not in the interest of the international community to have 24 million Taiwanese excluded."
Senator Fawcett told the Senate that Australia should be concerned by China's increasingly aggressive stance towards Taiwan and its declarations it could use military force to take the island.
"One of the key risks to security is the status quo across the Taiwan Strait," he said.
"It's important not just for the human rights of the 23.5 million people in the democracy that is Taiwan, but the impact that … conflict there would have on the rules based order that underpins peace and security around the world.
"If the PRC wins acceptance of its position in the international community on this matter then Taiwan's security and the status quo in the Taiwan Strait are at increased risk.
"The PRC will continue to claim that legally and politically it would be lawful for them to use force to achieve unification."
Dr Benjamin Herscovitch from the Australian National University told the ABC that the motion was an "explicit repudiation of China's efforts to spread disinformation about UN Resolution 2758".
He also said while the motion "doesn't necessarily reflect a formal Albanese government position" the fact it was passed by both major parties means it could be seen to carry the government's implicit endorsement .
Dr Herscovitch said while Beijing would likely criticise the motion it would "cause a bilateral disturbance, but not a downturn".
"The coordinated international nature of this motion, the fact that it was led by a bipartisan pair of parliamentarians rather than the Albanese government, and China's desire to have relatively stable ties with Australia will moderate Beijing's reaction," he said.