BRISBANE, Australia—Annette Lu, a former vice president of Taiwan, the Republic of China, is no stranger to conflict and the games governments play. She could guess but was a little puzzled by the recent delay in being granted a visa to visit Taiwanese communities in Australia during April. Her visit coincided with Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull’s trade trip to China and it left her wondering whether Australia is becoming too much under the influence of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Communist State in China refuses to recognize Taiwan as an independent state, claiming it instead as part of the mainland.
On the evening of April 16, she spoke briefly at a friendship dinner in her honor attended by Brisbane’s Lord Mayor Graham Quirk and his wife, state and federal elected officials and other Western and Taiwanese business leaders.
Likening China to a lion in the jungle and Taiwan as more like a “kitty cat,” Ms. Lu commended Australia for taking so many immigrants from Taiwan but warned against being played for a pawn.
“Your country is so great,” she told the dinner gathering, in Brisbane, but warned Australia not to help “feed the kitty cat to the lion.”
She also expressed concern that the delay in her visa approval, timed for after Turnbull’s China trip, was to appease a trade partner.
On his first visit to China as Prime Minister, Mr. Turnbull was feted by the Chinese leadership, meeting his counterpart Li Keqiang, and attending a private dinner with China’s President Xi Jinping, the ABC reported.
![Annette Lu [Lu Hsiu-lien] with some of the dinner guests at a Taiwanese restaurant in south Brisbane on April 16, 2016. Front row: (L–R) Annette Lu and Senator Claire Mary Moore. Back row: Duncan Pegg (1st L), state member for Moreton; Professor Chwei-Liang Chiou (3rd L); and Ken Lai (1st R), director-general Taipei Economic and Cultural Office Brisbane.](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F04%2F21%2FVP3-081E-1-674x449.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
