Prime Minister Anthony Albanese arrived in Tokyo for high-level security talks with the United States, India and Japan amid a fresh political storm over whether the United States would take military measures to defend Taiwan against China.

Albanese and his foreign minister, Penny Wong, landed Monday night for a meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) that will focus on steps to curb China’s assertiveness in the region.

On the eve of the visit, Chinese state media warned Albanese that his approach to the Quad meeting would be seen as a test of his “political wisdom” after the “anti-China strategy” pursued by the Morrison government.

But the call for a reset of Australia’s strained ties with its biggest trading partner is likely to be immediately tested after US President Joe Biden indicated on Monday that the United States would be ready to intervene militarily. to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression.

Speaking in Tokyo alongside Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the US president was asked: “Are you ready to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”

“Yes,” Biden said.

“You are?” the reporter asked again. “That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said, in remarks that were seen as a break from the traditional US stance of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan.

The comments put Albanese in a difficult position on one of the most contentious issues in foreign policy as he signals a diplomatic reset with Australia’s most important allies and stresses the importance of Australia’s partnership with the United States.

Just six months ago, the Labor Party criticized then Defense Minister Peter Dutton for telling the Australian newspaper: “It would be inconceivable if we did not support the United States in an action so the United States chose to take this action” in Taiwan.

Wong, then a shadow foreign affairs spokesman, called it inconsistent with the US policy of strategic ambiguity, while agreeing that the risk of conflict over Taiwan had increased.

“We stick to the long-standing bipartisan position on Taiwan, even if Mr. Dutton deviates from it,” Wong said at the time.

Ahead of the Quad meeting, Albanese said he expected relations with China “to remain difficult”, but that the government would pursue Australia’s national interest without politicizing national security.

“The relationship with China will remain difficult, I said before the election [and] it has not changed.

“It was China that changed, not Australia, and Australia should always stand up for our values ​​and we will in a government that I lead.”

Biden’s remarks – which are similar to those made last year that the White House later returned – come as Quad members prepare to review details of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) recently announced by the United States as part of a broader strategy for the region. aimed at countering China.

Albanese will have individual talks with Biden, Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Quad summit on Tuesday afternoon, all of which are expected to focus on China.

Chinese state media tabloid The Global Times published an opinion piece that questioned whether Australia’s China policy under Albanese would differ from the ‘reckless’ anti-China stance of his predecessor. .

“His [Albanese’s] participation in the Quad summit…should be the first test of the political wisdom of the new Australian government, particularly whether it could shed the shadow of Scott Morrison’s previous anti-China strategy which deeply damaged its own economy and to its trade,” the newspaper said.

“Experts are cautious about the difference between Australia’s new leader’s China policy and Morrison’s reckless actions that served US strategic interests. Especially in the South Pacific island countries, the new Australian government is very likely to invest more to compete with China.

“But smearing China’s cooperation with these countries or portraying it as a ‘Chinese threat’ would not change the course of equal and reciprocal cooperation between China and Pacific island countries.”

The opinion piece noted Albanese’s “little experience in diplomacy” and quoted a researcher at the Guangdong Institute of International Strategies, Zhou Fangyin, offering advice to the new prime minister.

“If the new Prime Minister is smart enough, he would adopt cautious rhetoric and avoid putting Australia’s role in the spotlight, otherwise it will only serve as a bad start for Australia-China relations under the new government,” he said. he declared. .

Albanese said he wanted to use the trip to show his new government’s commitment to the US alliance, which he said remains Australia’s ‘most important’, as well as its other relationships in the region. .

“The meetings that we will have, not only with the United States, but especially with our hosts in Japan and India, are going to be very important, in a good way, to send a message to the world that there is a new government. in Australia and it’s a government that represents change, in terms of how we treat the world on issues like climate change, but also continuity in how we respect democracy and how we value our friendships and our long temporal alliances.

The Quad summit is likely to finalize a new maritime initiative aimed at tackling Chinese illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific and will also consider how the four countries can cooperate more closely on cyber challenges and climate change.

Washington has expressed concern over the recently signed security pact between China and the Solomon Islands, which has raised concerns that China plans to establish a military base 1,700 km northeast of the coast of the queensland. China is said to be in the process of concluding similar agreements with Kiribati.

The White House said the summit would send a “powerful message” to Beijing about its focus on the Indo-Pacific, which comes after Biden traveled to South Korea to meet President Yoon Suk-yeol.

“We believe that showing it over four days – bilaterally with the Republic of Korea and Japan, through the Quad, through the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework – will send a powerful message. We believe this message will be heard everywhere. We believe he will be heard in Beijing,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.