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Opinion: The Chinese military’s no-notice live-firing between Australia and New Zealand is bringing deliberate and dangerous behaviour into our peaceful neighbourhood, raising the stakes for Australia and our neighbours, explains Strategic Analysis Australia’s Michael Shoebridge.
Of course, China is telling everyone this is all good because it’s not illegal, but it’s odd to hear our prime minister and defence minister parroting their words.
Beijing knew its no-notice actions would cause civilian passenger aircraft to urgently divert to avoid the danger live-fire drills pose. The Russians shooting down MH-17 in 2014, killing all 298 people on board, including 38 Australians, shows what trigger-happy people with surface-to-air missiles can do.
We’re hearing from Chinese state media that Australia exercises freedom of navigation rights in south-east Asia and between Japan and China, and conducts live-fire exercises with regional partners there, so the actions of the Chinese warships in our neighbourhood are the same. They know this is nonsense and that the comparison only works by avoiding some uncomfortable facts for China.
Australia’s military does indeed operate in international waters and airspace in south-east Asia and north Asia. And our military also conducts exercises, including live-fire drills, with our partners there.
However, the reason we do so is that this military presence and cooperation is working with local partners – such as the Philippines, Japan and Taiwan – to deter Chinese military aggression and to prevent Xi Jinping’s military from seizing chunks of these partners’ territories.
The Chinese assert unlawful ownership claims to Japan’s Senkaku Islands, to islands and features owned by Vietnam and the Philippines and an enormous chunk of the South China Sea across south-east Asia. Most brazenly, Beijing also claims the whole of Taiwan and is building its military to invade the territory where 24 million Taiwanese live, kill or imprison Taiwan’s leadership and send Taiwanese people to re-education camps.
No country in our neighbourhood, from Australia to PNG, across the south Pacific and over the Tasman Sea to New Zealand, has any designs on others’ territory, and no nation in this part of the Indo-Pacific is using its military or armed coastguard to water cannon and ram other nations’ vessels. Nor are they sending jet fighters into deliberate near-collisions with others’ patrol aircraft. There are no plans to kill local leaders or send populations to re-education camps.
Beijing’s real goal
Unlike Australia’s activities, China is not working collectively with local nations’ militaries to deter a dangerous aggressor. In fact, the PLA Navy is bringing its aggressive behaviours into a peaceful neighbourhood. It’s smart enough to do so in a way that is not brazenly illegal – which, at least, is a contrast with Chinese military and paramilitary behaviour in south-east and north Asia.
The latest statements from Chinese officials and former PLA Navy people in state media show that Beijing’s real goal is to stop Australia exercising with partners and allies such as Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam as the price of China stopping its behaviour in our neighbourhood.
That would be a terrible step for any Australian government to take because it would help achieve China’s goal of limiting collective security cooperation and leave us all dealing with China separately and alone.
One unfortunate lesson is that China’s care to dot the international law i’s and t’s is paying off with pro-Beijing voices, and is confusing and paralysing the Australian government’s response. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been at pains to tell us how safe we all are in the face of these no-notice drills. And Defence Minister Richard Marles has told us how the Chinese military’s action is all legal, although he has a concern with the level of transparency the Chinese provided. (They provided none.)
The Albanese government is stuck. Its foundational claim in foreign and defence policy is “stabilising” the Australia–China relationship, with leader and officials meetings to avoid misunderstanding and rebuild mutual trust and respect. So, it is highly unlikely that they or Foreign Minister Penny Wong will admit that this stabilisation effort has failed.
What do you mean ‘close surveillance’?
We’ve also learnt that very close surveillance must mean something different to Albanese and our military than what it means to an average Australian. For a week, as the Chinese warships travelled around our coasts, Albanese told us Defence was working very closely with New Zealand to “monitor the situation and observe what was going on”. Marles told us Australia would “watch every move” of the Chinese warships. Marles told us that he had made sure that “in an unprecedented way we are surveilling what the Chinese task group is doing. We’re doing that with Australian Navy assets and Air Force assets. We’re doing that in combination with our friends and in this instance, New Zealand”.
In retrospect, what was unprecedented was its failure, because our military’s close surveillance seems to have given no insights and provided no warning to civil airliners flying into the danger zone. Air Services Australia was alerted instead by a Virgin pilot receiving the Chinese warships’ radio message, and it looks like our Defence Force heard the news when Air Services called them to pass on the pilot’s message.
More disturbingly, hours after the drill, the chief of Australia’s military told us it was not clear if any live-firing had actually occurred. What does “watching every move” mean if you don’t know if warships fired their guns or launched missiles?
The last thing we have learnt is that the official meetings between Australia and China, which the government sees as the acme of statesmanship and foreign policy achievement, are empty charades.
Five days before the first live-fire drill, Australia’s second most senior military officer, Air Marshal Robert Chipman, and a civilian colleague met their Chinese counterparts in Beijing for the “2025 Australia-China Strategic Dialogue”. This was six days after a Chinese fighter jet had flown dangerously close to an RAAF patrol aircraft over the South China Sea and dropped flares that could have caused a crash.
Chipman and his colleague “reiterated the importance of all countries in the region operating in a safe and professional manner” and upholding “peace, security and stability”.
These are ritualised utterances we’ve seen in media releases describing meetings by Albanese, Marles and Wong with Chinese counterparts in this era of stabilisation – and they have had no effect.
We have seen nothing other than an escalating aggression from the Chinese military. Embarrassingly, Wong and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi were together at the G20 in South Africa when the warships drills began.
Australia is talking, but China isn’t listening. The Chinese military is following Xi Jinping’s instructions to use its power to intimidate others, and Chinese officials are twisting our tails by obeying international law here while being dangerous and provocative.
They are bringing some of the tension and danger we see around Taiwan and in south-east Asia into our peaceful neighbourhood. The only thing this isn’t is a stabilised relationship.
A version of this article was published in The Australian Financial Review and was republished with the author’s permission. Michael Shoebridge is director of Strategic Analysis Australia.
