On 30 March, the Chinese embassy in Fiji made an overt and concerning attempt to influence the Pacific information environment, seeking to shape perceptions around Chinese policing behaviours and reported links to organised crime in Fiji.

Responding to a 60 Minutes Australia episode aired on 24 March 2024 that investigated Chinese policing and organised crime links in Fiji, the embassy produced and published a two-part video essay muddying the waters around the allegations.

This was part of its continued efforts to undermine trust in traditional partners and Western media in the region.

The 60 Minutes investigation drew on two main sources to make a case for China’s malign influence in Fiji. The first was a report by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international NGO of investigative journalists. The OCCRP report looked at the activities of Suva-based Chinese businessman Zhao Fugang and his designation as a priority target by Australian authorities for alleged involvement with organised crime.

The second piece of the puzzle was a video produced by Chinese police lauding a rendition operation of alleged Fiji-based Chinese cyber criminals.

The rendition video, originally discovered by ASPI analysts, cast a spotlight on a controversial policing memorandum of understanding between Fiji and China. While the rendition video itself dates back to 2017, the timing of the 60 Minutes production followed the announcement that Fiji had decided to stick with the agreement, though some terms have been changed. Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka had already decided on the repatriation of Chinese police embedded in Fiji and allowing Fijian forces to continue training in China.

The 60 Minutes episode did not address the resolution of the memorandum’s status but spurred further media attention, which prompted the embassy to respond with two videos.

Despite enthusiastic production quality, the embassy’s videos had limited impact. While the first attracted more than 80,000 views on X, the second got only 40,000. Although viewer demographics cannot be determined, traceable public engagement suggested limited reach on online platforms. The videos were quoted or reposted by 62 unique X accounts that ASPI had assessed as based in the Pacific. These Pacific accounts were mostly linked to Fijians. Most quotes from Pacific-based accounts were broadly supportive of the videos, but few directly criticised the Australian government or Western media or meaningfully reflected upon the contents of the videos.

Beyond the Pacific, there was significant interaction from Chinese-language or China-based accounts. However, these reposts were largely from Chinese Communist Party officials or likely inauthentic accounts. Some such accounts had all reposted the same stream of Chinese state media articles; others were new accounts with no activity aside from reposting the embassy videos. While Pacific-based accounts were more likely to quote the embassy videos, engagement from all Chinese-language accounts and an overwhelming majority of accounts of unclear origin were purely reposts, a likely indication of attempts to inauthentically expand the reach of the posts.

The embassy tagged several Fijian media outlets in its posts on X, but they did not engage with the content.

Messages similar to those in the embassy’s videos were published in CCP state media and in certain Fijian online news outlets, such as the Fiji Times and Fiji Live. Of 17 articles addressing the issues raised by the 60 Minutes episode published by Pacific media online within two weeks of the broadcast, seven came from the Fiji Times and Fiji Live. Most media articles produced by Pacific outlets focused on the organised-crime and drugs angle, rather than the policing memorandum of understanding. This highlights the importance of these issues to the Fijian people, compared with the China-versus-the-West narrative pushed by the embassy’s videos.

China’s messaging failed to have an impact elsewhere online, such as popular public Facebook groups. No CCP state media article covering the policing issue was reshared on a public Facebook group or page in the Pacific region. Of the original Western media articles, it was the OCCRP report that gained the most interest through reshares in the region.

While there was a disconnect between the anti-Western narratives pushed by China and the region’s interest in corruption and organised crime, this is not a reason to be complacent. Australia and other foreign partners cannot sit idly by and allow baseless accusations against media organisations to continue. The CCP’s ability to publish statements critical of Australia through local media has the potential to undermine Australia’s reputation in Fiji and the region, particularly as several influential figures in the Pacific islands reposted the embassy’s content with neither additional commentary nor apparent scrutiny.

The time and effort invested in the production of these videos is an escalation of sophistication behind the CCP’s approach to criticising Australia and Australian media. That level of sophistication has rarely, if ever, been seen in the region before. This new creative effort to influence the information environment should be cause for concern.

Complacency and inaction cannot guarantee that future efforts will have the same limited effect. Pacific governments and media organisations are calling for more training on understanding disinformation tactics, on fact-checking information and on sifting through online noise. As a trusted partner, Australia can play an important role in capacity-building for a resilient Pacific information sphere, empowering the government, media and people of Fiji and other Pacific nations to make an educated decision on what is, and isn’t, disinformation.

When four of the Indo-Pacific’s leading democracies—Australia, India, Japan and the United States—revived the long-dormant Quad in 2017, their objective was clear: to create a strategic bulwark against Chinese expansionism and reinforce a stable regional balance of power. But the coalition is now adrift, and the security risks this poses should not be underestimated.

The Quad’s resurrection reflected a paradigm shift in US foreign policy. After decades of engagement with China, including aiding its economic rise, US policymakers—Democrats and Republicans alike—realised that America’s biggest trade partner had become its biggest strategic adversary, bent on replacing it as global hegemon. As US President Joe Biden indicated in his 2022 National Security Strategy, China is ‘the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.’

Biden, like his predecessor, Donald Trump, viewed the Quad as an essential instrument to uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific, a concept formulated by the late Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. So, Biden elevated Quad discussions from the level of foreign ministers, who had been meeting annually since 2019, to heads of state or government, initiating a flurry of leaders’ summits in 2021–23. But it has been more than a year since the Quad leaders last met, and with the US focused on the upcoming presidential election, their next summit is unlikely to be held before 2025.

The reason for this drop-off is simple: America’s priorities have changed. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the hybrid war the West is waging in response, not to mention renewed conflict in the Middle East, have stymied US efforts to position the Indo-Pacific at the ‘heart’ of its grand strategy. It is striking that the latest US foreign-assistance package provides $60.8 billion for Ukraine but only $8.1 billion for security in the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan, on which China has set its sights.

With limited resources to dedicate to the Indo-Pacific, Biden seems to hope that he can prevent a war over Taiwan through personal diplomacy with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Last month, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart, he stressed the importance of maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait.

Biden seems to believe that a more conciliatory approach towards China can also forestall the emergence of a comprehensive Sino-Russian alliance. The ‘no-limits partnership’ between China and Russia, reaffirmed during Russian President Vladmir Putin’s visit to Beijing this month, is problematic enough; China already has undercut Western sanctions by providing an economic lifeline to Russia in exchange for cheap energy and some of Russia’s most advanced military technologies, including air-defense and early-warning systems. A full military alliance, with China supporting the Kremlin’s war machine directly, would be the United States’ worst geopolitical nightmare.

The problem for Biden is that appeasing China and strengthening the Quad, which Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has decried as the ‘Indo-Pacific version of NATO’,are fundamentally incompatible. It might not be a coincidence that the Quad leaders have not met since Biden sent a series of cabinet officials to Beijing and met with Xi in California last November.

In fact, Biden has lately shifted his focus to less provocative initiatives like the ‘Squad’, an emerging unofficial regional grouping involving Australia, Japan, and the Philippines – countries that already have mutual defense treaties with the US. But what good is an anti-China alliance without India? It is, after all, the only power that has truly locked horns with the People’s Liberation Army this century: the tense military standoff along the disputed Himalayan border, triggered by China’s stealthy territorial encroachments, has just entered its fifth year. Moreover, as the leading maritime power in the Indian Ocean, India must play a central role in checking China’s westward naval march from its new citadel, the South China Sea.

The US has also been touting its AUKUS security partnership with Australia and Britain. But this grouping will not be able to play a meaningful role in Indo-Pacific security until Australia is equipped with nuclear-powered submarines, and that will not happen for another decade.

So far, Biden’s overtures to China have yielded few positive results. On the contrary, Xi has lately intensified coercive pressure on Taiwan, and Chinese provocations in the South China Sea have been increasing. Unless the US changes its approach, it may well fail to deter China from attacking Taiwan or cementing a strategic axis with Russia, just as it failed to deter Russia from invading Ukraine.

To maintain security in the Indo-Pacific, there is no substitute for a strong Quad with a clear strategic mission. Rather than unravelling years of efforts to build a coherent and credible regional strategy, thereby enabling yet more Chinese expansionism, Biden and his fellow Quad leaders must get to work defining such a mission and then commit to pursuing it. Otherwise, the Quad risks becoming a kind of Potemkin grouping. The facade of an alliance will not fool China.

Western analysts risk overestimating China’s emergence as an Arctic power, spurred by fears that they initially neglected the reappearance of the Arctic as a theatre for strategic competition. Contrary to such alarmist views, Beijing is in fact far more constrained in the region, mainly because of Russia’s ability to resist encroachment and China’s ability to accept limited resource and transit opportunities there.

In assessing China’s influence over Russia in the Arctic, there is a tendency to portray Russia as little more than a springboard for Chinese interests. In this flawed perception, President Vladimir Putin has invited Beijing into his Arctic larder as a way of buying goodwill for his invasion of Ukraine. But this underestimates Moscow, which assumes its alliance with China will hold without such bargaining. Russia also jealously guards its backyard and signals that regional advances made by China would injure their alignment elsewhere in locations with far greater strategic importance for Beijing.

To this end, Putin has stalled projects that fail to further his strategic agenda or give him a controlling stake. Russian law stipulates that, while private Russian energy firms can develop in the Arctic zone, they may not cede controlling stakes to foreign firms. Furthermore, Russia has not given China privileged use of the North Sea Route or its six major ports—Pevek, Tiksi, Dikson, Sabetta, Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. Chinese ships have either been refused entry or have abided by Russian transit laws that force them to pay tolls, provide ample notice about journeys and accept Russian pilots.

This freezes China’s position below Russia’s in the polar power struggle. And that will be hard to change, given that Russia’s 24,000-kilometre coastline in the Arctic accounts for 53 percent of the total for all countries. Russia also has a lot of skin in the game, with its Arctic territories contributing about 20 percent of its gross domestic product, 10 percent of its total investment and 20 percent of its exports. The Arctic accounts for 80 percent of Russia’s natural gas production and 20 percent of its crude oil production.

The tension between China and Russia in the Arctic lies behind Beijing’s tepid reaction to projects that fulfill Russia’s strategic goals, such as the co-development of the Power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline. Moscow, in turn, attempts to balance its relationship with China by diversifying its Arctic partners, encouraging India and the Gulf countries to participate and calling for a science station on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago in cooperation with India and China.

Many western analysts have failed to accurately calibrate the scale of the Arctic’s economic opportunities, another reason for their overestimation of China’s growing power in the region. They depict the Arctic as providing a shorter shipping route than Suez and a treasure chest of resources, including oil, natural gas, fisheries and critical minerals.

In reality, developing a reliable route to rival the Suez Canal remains implausible due to safety concerns, environmental uncertainties, lack of infrastructure and shortness of the navigation season. Currently, less than 10 percent of global shipping movement is in the Arctic and that looks unlikely to increase in the near term.

The idea that there will be a scramble for the Arctic’s natural resources in which China plays a major part is also overblown. Ostensibly, the opportunities in the region look promising: according to a US Geological Survey, the Arctic holds an estimated 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil resources and 30 percent of its undiscovered conventional natural gas resources. But most is in exclusive economic zones. In fact, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, six littoral states control roughly 85 percent of the water space, which includes the resources in the seabed. Moreover, Beijing cannot challenge the sovereign rights of Arctic states over maritime jurisdictions without contradicting its own efforts to nationalise the East and South China Seas, where its stakes are much higher.

Finally, a thaw in the Arctic will pose new challenges for China and other nations. The instability of softening terrain will make it difficult to build the infrastructure necessary for extracting resources. The changing landscape may also undermine the role of existing military structures such as roads, runways, naval bases and communications systems. It may even destabilise military strategies, as thinning ice and increased satellite coverage make submarines more exposed.

In sum, China’s potential in the Arctic is limited by Russia’s concerns of rivalry in the sole region where it remains a first-rank power, especially as the power gap between the two countries widens in other fields. Beijing has decided to respect Russia’s sensitivities and prioritise the pursuit of a shared revisionist world order, resulting in an adjustment of its ambitions in the Arctic. Western analysts should take heed or risk wasting resources in the Far North that might be better deployed elsewhere.

Let me be clear: the United States and its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region do not yet have a viable strategy to meet the challenges, dangers and uncertainties there. One is needed.

The aim of a new strategy must be to assure peace, stability and prosperity while not falling into the trap of allowing a possibly exaggerated perception of the Chinese military threat to displace sound strategic thinking. To be effective, strategy must go beyond military boundaries and be based on geopolitical and economic realities.

The plan for the United States and Britain to help Australia acquire eight nuclear attack submarines under AUKUS is not a strategy. The agreement was made to counter China’s growing military power and increasingly aggressive posture. Unless armed with nuclear weapons, eight submarines are not a strategy and may not be affordable.

In basic terms, strategic goals must be to convince, cajole or coerce the other side at the lowest possible cost and risk to do what we want or to stop taking actions harmful to us. That strategy must be achievable and affordable in terms of physical, human and financial resources. History guarantees failure unless the country implementing the strategy can precisely define its fundamental interests and has sufficient knowledge and understanding of the other side, not falling prey to ignorance.

The United States plays a leading role in the Indo-Pacific region. However, since World War II, US strategy has been stained by an absence of sound aims and sufficient knowledge and understanding of conditions in which force is to be used. In August 1964 the United States blundered into Vietnam. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, passed with only two dissenting Congressional votes, was a de facto declaration of war, triggered by erroneous reports of an attack by North Vietnamese PT boats against two US destroyers in international waters. No such attack occurred.

President Lyndon Johnson wanted to stop the Communists on the Mekong instead of the Mississippi. The flawed concept of a monolithic, godless Communist threat underwrote fighting the war. And, consistently, the United States failed to understand the commitment and strategy of North Vietnam and the weaknesses of South Vietnam.

The 2001 Afghan intervention likewise failed over the absence of realistic aims and knowledge and understanding of that country and its people. The objectives of nation building and imposition of democracy were absurd in these cases. But that was no more absurd than attacking Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction it did not actually possess.

In Asia, how sufficient is US knowledge and understanding about China? Next, how well does the US understand regional perceptions? And, last, does the current US (and Western) strategy for the Indo-Pacific and China take into account answers to these questions?

Overall US military strategy is to compete, deter and, if war comes, prevail—over China, in this case. But none of these criteria has been defined in terms that can be turned into actions. Further, where and how should the US and allies compete? Is China deterrable as it builds its military and influence? And who can win a thermonuclear war?

For the United States, this strategy is unaffordable. The more the US spends, the more its military force shrinks. And the United States cannot recruit and retain enough people for its current force. Many of these trends also apply to US allies and partners.

Step one requires a comprehensive, objective analysis of China and its strengths and weaknesses. One can argue that, given its demographics, exploding debt, weakening economic growth, excessive savings rate, and other constraints, China could suffer from massive civil unrest. Some may think that could make China more dangerous. But history shows otherwise.

China’s ‘unprecedented military expansion’ needs to be more closely assessed. For example, its navy has nearly 100  Type 22 missile boats. They give it a numerical advantage but hardly a capability advantage.

Step two is redefining the aims of an Indo-Pacific strategy in relation to China. First must be to engage with China in the many areas defined by mutual interest. Second must be economic negotiations to relieve unnecessary tensions where possible. Third, it is unduly provocative to declare China as the leading or major threat but rely on only a military strategy in facing it, not a broader one.

The core of the necessary strategy is prevention, applying porcupine defence as its key military construct in close conjunction with regional allies and partners. Porcupine defence will make any initial attacks by an adversary too expensive in terms of losses to contemplate. Why Taiwan has not fully adopted this strategy is inexplicable. In the unlikely event of war, China’s access beyond the first island chain would be denied by blockade. And expeditionary forces would roll up China’s overseas Belt and Road facilities, imposing further unacceptable costs.

The submarine project is Pillar 1 of AUKUS. Pillar 2, for other technology exchanges, should be expanded to appropriate regional states. A smart, affordable and effective strategy for the Indo-Pacific based on complete knowledge and understanding of the geostrategic and economic conditions combined with porcupine defence is needed now. The question is whether these first principles will take hold or remain ignored.

Don’t be surprised if another complicated term soon enters Australian discussions about security and defence. It’s ‘strategic simultaneity’—simultaneous strategic competition arising across multiple regions and domains. 

Strategic simultaneity has been an important part of US and NATO security thinking for some time. This includes as a way to usefully understand the types of interlinked challenges the US and its partners face, and as a guide for how collective deterrence might be postured.  

Australian security debates typically don’t shy away from difficult topics. For instance, Australian agencies and commentators have examined deterrence at length, from the 2020 Defence Strategic Update (DSU) to the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR). But while the DSR mentions deterrence 34 times, stressing the need to integrate capabilities across domains of warfare, the problem of multiple threats occurring simultaneously, sometimes in a coordinated manner, doesn’t appear at all. 

 Yet simultaneous strategic challenges are becoming a defining feature of contemporary security competition: Houthi raiding in the Red Sea, China testing allied resolve in the Philippines EEZ, renewed DPRK assertiveness, Russian and Chinese probing of Japan’s air and naval domains, Israel’s war against Hamas, and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Each potentially calls on Australian resources: diplomatic, military, financial, or all three. 

It’s important not to overstate the significance of strategic simultaneity. After all, it’s unusual for an existing order to face just one focal challenge. However, the Ukraine war has already shown how connected simultaneity poses problems. Russia has drawn on a secure list of out-of-area partners like Iran, the DPRK, China and other nations to replenish its war stocks and revitalise its combat effectiveness.  

In a future conflict with the US, could China use those states as its arsenal? And how would we disrupt it? Even without getting involved in conflicts, others could simultaneously posture as second-tier adversaries—either opportunistically or in concert—with multiple extra-regional crises draining US and allied resources. 

Australia is slowly realising that security challenges are now more joined-up. Defence Minister Richard Marles has referred to the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific as a shared strategic space. Coordination between a loose coalition of authoritarian nations – China, Russia, Iran and the DPRK – has increased. Australia has encouraged European attention to the Indo-Pacific, like enhanced French commitments to the region, promoting a stronger regional UK naval presence via AUKUS, and championing the Indo-Pacific Four (Australia, Japan, the ROK and New Zealand) as NATO partners.  

One response to strategic simultaneity is simply to leave it to the US to sort out. That wouldn’t be unusual. In Australia we often regard security challenges as monodirectional and monocausal. Typically, our policies are linear responses to exogenous threats, with clearly defined (usually geographic) centres of gravity.  

But that thinking won’t work for Australia in future. Here’s why: 

—We’ve scoped our security and defence environment to the limit of our capabilities. The vast Indo-Pacific maritime space means our strategic framing automatically encompasses simultaneity challenges, whether we like it or not.  

—Even if simultaneity mainly affects the United States, it will have powerful knock-on effects for Australia: US balancing in the Indo-Pacific; its deterrence capabilities; and its capacity to shape the normative and institutional mechanics of regional order. 

—Simultaneity isn’t a short-term challenge. Simultaneous security challenges will be posed against either a Trump 2.0 or Biden 2.0 White House as America’s adversaries test Washington’s risk appetite. But simultaneity will also arise from local and transnational disorder: in the Middle East; in Europe; the Pacific; and an array of potential Asian flashpoints. 

—Isolation and the stopping power of water cannot insulate us, because many contemporary threat vectors—like cyber and information warfare—simply don’t respect physical distance. Moreover, as our defence and foreign policy documents have repeatedly stressed, Australia’s geostrategic orbit is now the epicentre of global competition. 

How should Australia address simultaneity challenges? The first step is to admit it’s a problem. But it’s more than that: thinking about our security settings in terms of simultaneity offers real opportunities for Australian governments prepared to act with foresight about our choices. 

Let’s deal with the problems first. One useful way to understand them is to see simultaneity as a deterrence challenge with three major components.  

First, simultaneity presents a deterrence capability problem. In other words, can the US and its allies deter aggression in multiple places at once? In the event of a conflict which depletes the US and its partners, can they conventionally deter follow-on threats, or will more extreme solutions like weapons of mass destruction be the fallback? 

Second, simultaneity generates deterrence communication problems. What happens if US deterrence messaging directed at China is mistakenly picked up by the DPRK as a prelude to a first strike? How, then, can the US and its partners best ensure deterrence signals are picked up as intended, and by the intended recipient? 

Third, simultaneity raises question about deterrence credibility and escalation management. During crises, US and Western responses have typically telegraphed a preference for de-escalation. In the recent case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this was interpreted as a green light for aggression.  

We would be foolish to think others didn’t learn from this. Hence, in addressing future simultaneous security crises, Australia and other US partners must re-establish credibility, identifying escalation pathways that are just as clear as the off-ramps. 

Understanding simultaneity offers a key to successfully deterring those seeking to upend strategic stability. For one thing, hostile nations will be just as reliant on networks of like-minded states as those upholding the rules-based order. For another, it reinforces that the West works best when it can respond concertedly to security crises, and exploit points of vulnerability and friction amongst hostile powers. 

Yet this won’t happen by osmosis. Much work must be done to unlock the potential of a strategy drawing on simultaneity’s opportunities, while also responding to its challenges. Coordination between allies and partners is crucial. So too is building confidence in deterrence, and ensuring messaging clarity. And ultimately we’ll need to accept that we cannot engender strategic effects with half-measures. To deter and disrupt the multifaceted crises that strategic simultaneity will pose, we—like our opponents—must also be collectively prepared to accept the accompanying risks.