“Taiwan’s past record has shown that it has upheld its commitments in both bilateral and multilateral agreements.”

Yeh’s colleague, Janet Lin, associate adviser to the council and director of the World Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce in Australia, said exporters were missing out on direct trade opportunities with Taiwan as Australia’s bilateral free-trade agreement with China excluded Taiwan.

Bringing Taiwan into the multilateral CPTPP will circumvent this, Lin said.

“Strategically, helping Taiwan develop more options for trade diversification will only strengthen the liberal international order, to which both Australia and Taiwan belong,” said William Lin, president of the Taiwanese Association of Australia’s Melbourne chapter.

“Helping Taiwan’s inclusion in the CPTPP will, thus, expand Taiwan’s economic and strategic autonomy and improve the cohesion and interoperability between the Western-led liberal international order’s key allies and partners.”

While China was not directly mentioned in the first hearing of the parliamentary inquiry on Friday, the inquiry’s chairman, Queensland Liberal MP Ted O’Brien, who was supportive of having a trading relationship with Taiwan to diversify Australia’s trade mix, asked the Australian trade department whether prior trade performance should impact how Australia assesses new applicants.

“Would the previous performance, let’s say, of a prospective member’s compliance with other agreements be taken into consideration,” O’Brien asked.

O’Brien also inquired how prospective members with state-owned enterprises would demonstrate their commitment to the CPTPP’s high trading standards based on market and commercial decisions.

“In the event that a prospective member does have considerable state-owned enterprises, how would other CPTPP members, including Australia, go about judging their demonstration of commitment,” he asked.

The Australian trade department said a key sign of commitment towards those standards would be for countries to prove they have legislation and regulations in place that are consistent with the rules in the CPTPP, or at least be in the process of implementing new legislation to reflect the rules in the CPTPP.

CPTPP members would also need to be assured that economies with membership aspirations have shown they are committed to standards of its other trade deals.

Other submissions to the Australian parliamentary inquiry also advocated for the expansion of membership to increase freer global trade and diversification.

“CPTPP allows access to previously more limited markets, through its depth of integrational provisions,” Suder said.

University of Sydney Business School Professor Shumi Akhtar said that expanding the CPTPP was in Australia’s best interests after the year of conflict with China.

“Our current predicament is the legacy of past governments’ lack of attention to developing a smart and sustainable trade strategy for Australia to advance. The current state of our trading partners and trading activities is so backward that it is embarrassing, to say the least, given the numerous resources and riches that Australia is blessed with,” Akhtar said.

Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott also put forward a submission that supported the expansion of the CPTPP, both for economic and political reasons.

The inclusion of Britain in the CPTPP would mean that four of the “Five Eyes” countries would be joined more closely in an economic and security relationship.

Membership in the CPTPP is considered by Britain to be crucial to its post-Brexit trade pivot away from Europe, as CPTPP membership would remove 95 per cent of tariffs with other member countries.