Tag Archive for: Australia-China Relations

With Chinese warships nearby, Australia needs to step up as a maritime power

China now fields the world’s largest navy, and last week’s rare foray into our exclusive economic zone should be a wake-up call for Australians. Our most critical economic and security interests travel by sea, and in a rapidly deteriorating strategic environment, we can’t afford complacency. It’s time for Australia to step up as a genuine maritime power.

Over the last decade, China has morphed from a modest coastal navy into a true blue-water force. In 2015, its navy’s battle force—submarines, surface combatants and aircraft carriers—stood at 255 vessels, according to the US Congressional Research Office. That figure has soared to 400 in 2025, with further growth on the horizon. The fleet’s quality has also jumped, with around 70 per cent of China’s current battle force built since 2010.

The Royal Australian Navy fields just 16 battle-force vessels—its smallest and oldest in decades. That includes six submarines aged 22 to 29 years, seven Anzac-class frigates (19 years to 27 years old), and three much newer Hobart-class destroyers that lack the firepower of true destroyers. While the government plans to grow the fleet by the 2030s and 2040s to levels not seen in decades, the current shortfall is compounded by dwindling support capabilities—such as replenishment, hydrography and mine warfare—after decades of underinvestment by successive governments.

Comparing ship counts alone may be crude, but it highlights China’s drive to become a true blue-water maritime power. Its rapid fleet expansion goes hand in hand with sweeping structural reforms, including the creation of a coast guard in 2013—now the world’s largest maritime law enforcement outfit, boasting more than 142 vessels.

Among them is the so-called monster ship 5901 Nansha—nearly four times the size of an Anzac-class frigate, which form the backbone of our surface combatant fleet.

The growth and modernisation of China’s navy has gone hand-in-hand with an increasingly expeditionary strategy. Chinese naval deployments to the Indian and Pacific oceans are on the rise, marked by the establishment of a naval base in Djibouti in 2017 and increasingly common Pacific port visits, including stops in Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea as well as hospital ship deployments to the South Pacific. Against this backdrop, Australia shouldn’t be shocked to see a Chinese navy task group off our east coast.

It’s rightly considered an uncommon occurrence, particularly since Australia’s east coast isn’t exactly on the way to anywhere—making it clear this was a deliberate show of capability. But we should expect it to become increasingly common.

Why should Australia care about China’s growing naval and maritime power? Because our core vulnerabilities lie at sea. Some 99 per cent of our trade travels by ship, and 99 per cent of our data travelling to the rest of the world passes through undersea cables. But it’s not just about data and trade generally; it’s particularly the critical goods that keep our economy running and ensure our security, from fuel and ammunition to pharmaceuticals and fertiliser. Cut off those supplies, and we cripple our economy and security: no fuel means grounded F-35s and idle trucks nationwide.

In a crisis or conflict, an adversary wouldn’t need to invade our shores to bring Australia’s economy—and by extension, our defence—to its knees. All it would have to do would be to cut off our critical seaborne supplies: fuel, fertiliser, ammunition, pharmaceuticals, and more. In a rapidly deteriorating strategic environment, Australia must be able to defend its maritime domain.

Recognising this vulnerability means Australia must develop the capacity to protect critical seaborne supplies in a crisis. It demands focus, structural reform, speed and investment. The 2021 announcement of AUKUS (our nuclear-powered submarine pathway), the planned surface combatant fleet expansion and the army’s move to adopt maritime strike are all crucial steps, but they aren’t enough. We must address the wider gaps in the fleet, and do it at speed.

We must recognise that maritime capability isn’t just hardware; it’s also structure and mindset. We need to reform our civil maritime security, establish a coastguard to free the Royal Australian Navy from border policing and adjust our legislative architecture to build a genuinely capable maritime strategic fleet.

Australia shouldn’t, and can’t, hope to match China’s naval might. Our maritime strategy hinges on alliances and partnerships across the region, including deeper co-operation with partners like the United States, Japan, and India. Yet to safeguard our vital interests at sea, we must demonstrate self-reliance within our alliances – we must develop a comprehensive maritime strategy and resource it.

China’s naval demonstration on Australia’s east coast should serve a reminder of our vulnerability, and a warning that addressing this vulnerability requires Australia to truly recognise its place as a maritime power. Our future prosperity and security depend on it.

China’s ships near Australia. Challenges in the South China Sea. Get used to it

Australia can take three lessons from Chinese military behaviour in the past two weeks.

China will keep conducting dangerous military manoeuvres against us and other countries in the South China Sea; its actions will continue to differ from its words; and it is likely to send advanced Chinese warships to our region more often and for longer.

It has been an eventful fortnight in the China-Australia military relationship. First, on 11 February the Department of Defence reported the fifth known incident of unsafe behavior by China’s military towards the Australian Defence Force. On the same day the department reported that a powerful Chinese naval task group was operating in Australia’s northeastern maritime approaches.

On 17 February, Defence reported that it had restarted senior military talks with China. Talks were held at the level of vice chief of defence and this marked the first time that senior-level dialogue had been held between militaries since 2019 (Previous talks had occurred at the level of chief of defence, and working level talks have been held twice since 2019.

Finally, on 21 February and the following two days, the Chinese task group conducted not one but two live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea, between Australia’s most populous region and New Zealand. These unprecedented exercises, while consistent with international law, came with limited notice, meaning commercial aircraft had to quickly change flight paths to avoid potential danger. Foreign Minister Wong challenged her Chinese counterpart over the incident on the margins of a G20 meeting in South Africa.

Expect China’s military to keep targeting Australia, as well as other US allies and partners that uphold freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea. In the coming month, ASPI will release a live tracker of military incidents to outline frightening trends of unsafe behavior by China’s military towards Australia, the US, Canada, the Netherlands, the Philippines and any other country that challenges Beijing’s excessive maritime claims.

Second, this fortnight reminds us of the vast gulf between China’s words and actions. China’s readout of the 17 February defence talks noted that both sides had ‘agreed to continue strengthening strategic communication … properly handle disputes and differences, and carry out exchanges and cooperation.’ Its South China Sea challenges are the cause of dispute, while its far seas deployments lack transparency and communication.

This lesson also reminds us that while China’s tactics may change, its strategy does not. We may have ups and downs in our diplomatic, economic and military relations with China, but long-term trends reflect a deteriorating relationship with a global power set on expanding its influence. The past fortnight has provided a snapshot of China’s ability to deploy a variety of tactics, which in this case were designed to signal its military reach and test Australia’s military and diplomatic responses.

The third lesson is that we should expect more Chinese naval deployments in and around Australia’s exclusive economic zone. This trend has been evident since 2022, but there are broader developments underway in China’s military that indicate Beijing’s ambition to develop a global navy that will be able to project power into our region more frequently and for longer periods at a time.

China’s naval strategy for most of the 20th century was focused on coastal defence. However, since 2008, it has deployed naval task groups to the Gulf of Aden for counter-piracy operations. These have typically been made up of two combatant ships and an oiler for logistical support. Each task group can stay in the gulf for about four months.

Due to a lack of support ships or a network of overseas support bases, we haven’t seen regular and sustained deployments by China’s navy to other areas of the globe. But this trend is changing.

In December 2024, the US Department of Defense reported that ‘China is expected to build additional fleet replenishment oilers soon to support its expanding long-duration combatant ship deployments.’ China has 12 replenishment oilers that support long-distance, long-duration deployments. (The US Navy operates 15 replenishment oilers and and can also use the allies’ ports ). Construction of new oilers has become a priority for China, especially given its lack of overseas logistics facilities.

China had initial success in establishing an overseas base at Djibouti, which now provides some logistical support to China’s naval deployments. China also maintains a regular military presence at the Ream naval base in Cambodia. However, despite efforts to persuade other countries, including Pacific Islands countries, China has yet to establish military bases or logistical facilities elsewhere.

As China’s navy improves its logistics and defensive capabilities, a lack of overseas bases will only slow, not stop, China’s ambition to project naval forces into global environs (including Australia’s) more often and for longer durations. This will have implications for Australia’s own limited naval capabilities, which will come under pressure to monitor more Chinese ships in our region, while continuing operations that support freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea.

Sidewinders on P-8s and MH-60Rs: deterring Chinese attacks on Australian aircraft

China’s continued attacks on aircraft patrolling the East Asian waters, including Australian aircraft, are unacceptable. But they’re encouraged by the targeted countries’ failure to equip their aircraft for self-defence.

Australia should rapidly equip its key maritime aircraft with Raytheon AIM‑9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. This would make Beijing think twice. Moreover, integrating the AIM-9X should be relatively straightforward and could bring Australia opportunities to help its friends in doing the same.

At least four times since 2022, Australian and Canadian aircraft operating legally in international airspace have been attacked by Chinese fighters. Each time, the fighters dropped projectiles—chaff or flares—close in front of the targeted aircraft, once within 30 metres. The drops were against Australia and Canada’s primary maritime patrol aircraft and naval helicopter types: Royal Australian Air Force P-8A Poseidons in 2022 and 2025, a Royal Australian Navy MH-60R Seahawk in 2023 and a Royal Canadian Air Force CH‑148 Cyclone in 2024.

Make no mistake: such tactics are attacks. They are air-to-air bombing that can severely damage or destroy the target if their projectiles hit. Flares burn hot enough to melt aluminium aircraft skin if embedded in the skin. And if an engine ingests flares or chaff, as happened in 2022, it may fail or catch fire, forcing a mission abort or even a crash.

China uses such aggressive tactics to drive away other nations’ aircraft from where they’re entitled to be but where it wishes they weren’t—such as the South China and Yellow Seas, where the four incidents occurred. Even where the projectiles don’t hit the target aircraft, its crew must take evasive action or go home. Then China has achieved its aim of disrupting foreign operations.

Beijing knows it can get away with it because there is minimal political and operational risk.

Because China hasn’t used normal weapons, such as guns and air-to-air missiles, it can pretend it has made no attack, which would be a severe escalation and risk open conflict. The Australian Department of Defence conforms to China’s pretence with media releases merely describing Chinese fighter pilots’ actions as ‘unsafe and unprofessional’.

Operationally, such attacks bring essentially no risk to Chinese pilots and their valuable aircraft. The fighters are far faster and more manoeuvrable than their targets—which also have no dedicated means of defence against other aircraft. The Chinese pilots need no more caution than is necessary for avoiding collisions. And their government has no reason to desist.

What’s needed is to add risk into Chinese calculations. A prompt, technically promising means of doing so is to undertake basic integration of an air-to-air missile, most obviously the AIM-9X, onto the Poseidon and Seahawk designs.

Even the most limited integration of any air-to-air missile—just enough so it can simply fire forwards from its host aircraft—would dramatically raise the stakes for Beijing. Chinese fighter pilots could not come close enough to bomb the target without knowing they are exposing themselves to being shot down. Their alternative would be to use weapons such as guns or missiles to attack the target from a distance, but thus clearly showing China as the escalatory aggressor.

No other Poseidon or Seahawk users are known to be integrating air-to-air missiles on those types. Canberra going alone might seem foolish given Australia’s poor record in such projects. Yet integrating the AIM-9X should not be unusually difficult.

Electronically, the missile is largely self-contained, with an infrared seeker that can independently find targets. So, a host aircraft needs only basic communications with it to confirm the target and to fire. The AIM-9X is smaller and lighter than various weapons that P‑8As and MH-60Rs already carry externally, suggesting physical factors such as weight and drag would present no great problems.

Moreover, basically the same thing has been done before. Britain rapidly fitted Nimrod maritime patrollers with Sidewinders during the Falkland’s War. And the United States has integrated the AIM-9X onto AH-1Z helicopters, which are smaller and less powerful than the Seahawk.

Finally, the AIM-9X serves with the RAAF and armed forces of 26 other countries. If Australia gains expertise in fitting it to P-8As and MH-60Rs, it can offer the knowhow to friends, including the United States, and maybe do the modification work.

Arming Poseidons and Seahawks cannot be guaranteed to make China back off. But it would at least force it to think twice.

China drops flares ahead of RAAF plane, sends ships to Australia’s northern approaches

Highly provocative and unprofessional action by the Chinese military has again put the Albanese government’s approach to relations with Beijing under pressure. So has deployment of a powerful Chinese naval flotilla close to Australia.

China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea and beyond make it much harder for the government to stabilise the relationship with Beijing—under its formula of ‘cooperate where we can, disagree where we must, and engage in the national interest’.

On 11 February, a Chinese air force J-16 fighter released flares just 30 metres in front of an Australian P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft, in what the Department of Defence has described as an ‘unsafe and unprofessional’ interaction. Such interactions with China’s military are now becoming normal. The flare release, reported on 13 February, was the fifth known incident of unsafe behavior by the Chinese military towards the Australian Defence Force since 2022.

It should reinforce the need for caution by the current, and indeed any future Australian government, in approaching its relationship with China.

In another statement on the same day the department said a Chinese naval task group was operating in Australia’s northeastern maritime approaches. Among the ships was a Jiangkai-class frigate, a Fuchi-class replenishment vessel and a Type 055 Renhai cruiser.

Deployment of the cruiser is important. It is likely the first ship of its class to have operated so close to Australia. Renhais are among the most formidable warships afloat. Each has 112 vertical-launch missile cells and can carry a large load of weapons, including anti-ship cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles, torpedoes and anti-submarine weapons. Although it’s not yet clear whether China is incorporating land-attack cruise missiles in the Renhai class, room for them could easily be found in a vessel with so many launch cells.

It is important to emphasise that the flotilla is operating within international law, just as it’s important to note that Australian warships and aircraft in the South China Sea operate in international waters and airspace—as they have done for decades.

The two developments announced on 13 February send important signals regarding China’s future military posture. Firstly, deployment of the cruiser-led flotilla sends a message to Australia that China can and will project power and presence into our maritime approaches. As the Chinese navy works towards becoming a global force, it will continue to perform more missions beyond the First Island Chain, the string of islands from Japan to Indonesia. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen the Chinese navy operate off the West Australian coast and through the Torres Strait in 2022, sit off north-eastern Australia during the Talisman Sabre military exercise in 2023 and sail a Renhai and an advanced destroyer through the Coral Sea on their way to Vanuatu in 2024.

Moreover, the Chinese military seems to be applying its unsafe and unprofessional South China Sea tactics closer to Australia. Indeed, its first publicly reported unsafe incident in relation to Australia occurred in our northern approaches on 17 February 2022.

This global ambition by the Chinese navy means that the Department of Defence cannot assume that Australia will always have a degree of isolation across a strategic moat, epitomised by the notional sea-air gap that an adversary supposedly cannot cross. The Renhai deployment reinforces the shrinking relevance of geographic isolation in Australian defence planning. The ship could, in a crisis, hold at risk any Royal Australian Navy warships within range of its YJ-18 anti-ship missiles, and Royal Australian Air Force aircraft could be threatened by its HHQ-9 air-defence missiles.

Australia must expect more aggression by Chinese fighter pilots against RAAF maritime patrol aircraft in international airspace over the South China Sea. Beijing has a reputation for such provocations, especially against US allies. Defence needs to think about a response if an incident leads to the loss of an aircraft and crew or forces them to land on a Chinese-occupied feature in the South China Sea.

In relation to the new Trump administration, China probably wants to keep its powder dry, seeking to minimise an impending trade conflict and to manage a deteriorating economy that relies heavily on exports. However, we should expect that China’s military will continue to target smaller countries, such as Australia, to end their long-standing military presence in the First Island Chain.

Thus, even though China’s military has recently softened its approach towards the United States, it continues to target the militaries of smaller countries exercising freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea. In addition to Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the Philippines have all been subjected to unsafe actions from China’s military in the past 18 months.

Notice the contrast between how China treats foreign military forces operating in its vicinity and how others treat China when it approaches them. China engages in dangerous intimidation and invariably blames the other party.

But when China deploys a powerful naval flotilla close to Australia, Canberra’s response is cautious and subdued. After all, there’s no indication that the Chinese ships were not in international waters.

‘Australia respects the rights of all states to exercise freedom of navigation and overflight in accordance with international law, just as we expect others to respect Australia’s right to do the same,’ the department said.

But it must be asked whether anyone in the Chinese leadership listens to Australia’s polite statements?  These incidents over the South China Sea keep on happening, suggesting that our current approach to deterring future incidents simply isn’t effective.

Tiptoeing around China: Australia’s framework for technology vendor review

Australia has a new framework for dealing with high-risk technology vendors, though the government isn’t brave enough to call them that.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says the framework ‘will ensure the government strikes the right balance in managing security risks while ensuring Australia continues to take advantage of economic opportunities’.

An alternative reading would be that it’s an opaque, toothless framework that gives the government wiggle room to minimise risk to the China relationship by increasing risk to our digital sovereignty.

The framework was announced on 20 December but not published. It’s a set of guidelines for assessing national security risks posed by foreign technology products and services sold in Australia. The timing was so unlikely to attract attention that it looked deliberate. Information on the Department of Home Affairs website, striking an unsatisfying balance between brevity and circumlocution, reinforces the impression that the government would be pleased if few people noticed the policy.

The framework establishes a ‘proactive process to consider foreign ownership, control or influence risks associated with technology vendors’. That will enable the government to ‘provide guidance on technology vendor risks to inform public and private sector procurement decisions about the security of technology products and services’. Risks will be assessed and mitigations considered where these risks are unacceptable.

The government’s factsheet provides a few more details. The security reviews will be led by Home Affairs in consultation with relevant agencies, presumably including technical experts in our security agencies. Assessments will be prioritised based on preliminary risk analysis of such factors as where the product or service is deployed, its prevalence and access to sensitive systems or data.

We don’t know what technologies the reviews will focus on or who will make the final decisions on which risks need mitigating. Review findings will apparently inform future government policies or support technical guidance to help organisations mitigate identified risks. The framework itself will not be released publicly to ‘ensure the integrity of the framework’s processes and protect information relating to national security’.

What’s clear is the focus on mitigating risk. Bans or restrictions on vendor access are off the table, even though, as we discovered with 5G, it is sometimes impossible to mitigate technology products and services that are one update away from being remotely manipulated by the vendor who supplies and maintains them.

But who would seek to manipulate or disrupt the critical technologies on which Australians rely?

Well, the government says the framework was not established to ‘target vendors from specific nations.’ The majority of foreign vendors ‘do not present a threat to Australia’s interests. However, in some cases, the application, market prevalence or nature of certain technologies, coupled with foreign influence, could present unacceptable risks to the Australian economy. This is particularly true if the vendor is owned, controlled or influenced by foreign governments with interests which conflict with Australia’s.’

The document steers clear of the more zingy phrase ‘high-risk vendors’, which was associated with Australia’s 2018 ban on Chinese 5G suppliers Huawei and ZTE.

It’s a tricky balance. Reluctance to point the finger at our largest trading partner is understandable, even though everyone knows we wouldn’t need a framework without our growing reliance on Chinese vendors who are indeed owned, controlled or influenced by the Chinese government. But, unsettled by China’s reaction to its predecessor singling out Chinese 5G vendors, this government seems more concerned with anticipating Chinese concerns than explaining to the public what technologies it should be worried about.

For example, will the government target electric cars and solar inverter technologies, where China’s dominant position has raised concerns? Perhaps not, since we are reminded that foreign technology companies ‘are essential’ for Australia’s net zero transition.

Businesses weighing the merits of buying cost-competitive Chinese tech will be reassured that the framework won’t introduce new legislated authorities or regulation. The focus seems to be on consultation with business so the government can ‘understand the risks introduced by a product or service, and the availability of mitigations’.

But mitigations reduce efficiency and add cost, and selecting pricier gear from alternative trusted vendors adds even more. Businesses may feel that avoiding these extra costs is worth the risk.

How might this play out? One way is we never hear about the framework again, aside from occasional technical security guidance. Low public awareness of the risks will mean inquiries can be batted back with assurances that the government has been making progress but can’t talk about it for national security reasons.

Then, one morning in the middle of an Indo-Pacific crisis, we might wake up to find the power and water don’t work.

As Mike Tyson might have said, everyone has a secret technology vendor review framework until they get punched in the mouth.

China is buying less from developed countries, but not Australia

Australia’s exports to China have not returned to the peaks before the Chinese authorities started imposing discriminatory bans, but they are higher than five years ago, unlike China’s imports from every other major advanced economy.

Although there is no official campaign to curb access of western exporters to Chinese markets, there has been a marked shift in China’s imports away from advanced nations to favour the developing world. Australia is the stand-out exception.

Analysis by the Hinrich Foundation shows that the share of China’s imports coming from the G7 nations fell from 27 percent in 2017 to 22 percent in 2023. Japanese and German exports have been particularly hard-hit. The combined share from South Korea and Taiwan dropped from 18 percent to 14 percent.

China has been buying more from the ASEAN nations—their share of China’s imports has risen from 12 percent to just over 15 since 2017, while Russia’s share has doubled to 5 percent. Latin American and African nations have also increased their share of China’s imports.

Australia is an important source of supplies to China, accounting in 2023 for just over 6 percent of its imports, an increase from 5.5 percent in 2017. Australia last year supplied 64 percent of China’s iron ore and more than half its lithium.

There has been some softening of Australia’s exports to China during 2024, mainly reflecting weaker iron ore and lithium prices and a pause in the Chinese central bank’s gold purchases.

However, China’s share of Australia’s goods exports has revived from a low of 29 percent two years ago during China’s campaign of economic coercion to 36 percent now. Australia is thus more dependent on a single market than it has been since the late 1940s, when its biggest export customer was Britain.

Figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade show that in the six months to September, exports to China of coal were up 21 percent from a year earlier, bauxite shipments were up 39 percent and cotton sales were 41 percent higher. China has also returned to Australian wine and barley markets.

China’s share of Australian exports is still short of the levels above 40 percent reached between 2019 and 2021, however that was the result of unsustainably high iron ore prices which in mid-2021 touched a record US$220 a tonne. Iron ore is now down to US$105, with markets expecting further significant falls in 2025.

Chinese authorities remain keen to build their export markets globally, to help offset a weaker domestic economy.

The big shift in China’s export markets has been the rapid fall in sales to the United States. This has been driven by the US rather than by China.

In 2018, the US was taking 22 percent of China’s exports but by 2023, this had plunged to 14 percent. From a US perspective, the share of its imports supplied by China fell from 21 percent to 14 percent.

The tariffs imposed on Chinese goods during the first Trump administration and maintained under President Biden have had a big effect, but US companies have also made a conscious choice to source supplies that carry less geopolitical risk.

There has been a modest diversification of Australia’s imports away from China (and Hong Kong) following its coercive campaign against Australian exports. China’s share of Australia’s imports peaked at 30 percent in the latter half of 2020, but has dropped back to stabilise at about 25 percent since mid-2023.

That is almost double China’s 14 percent share of world exports and highlights Australia’s high dependence on Chinese manufactured goods.

With Christmas around the corner and the return of dialogue between the Australian and Chinese leaders, imports of Chinese goods are accelerating.

Mobile phones and other telephonic gear worth an amazing $1.1 billion were shipped from China into Australia in September, more than double the August tally. Imports of electrical goods, including solar panels and wind turbines, increased 62 percent while shipments of computers rose 27 percent, as did imports of prams, games and toys.

Australia has no obvious mechanism for lowering its trade dependence on China. The legislative charter of trade agency Austrade does not permit it to promote Australia as a market for other countries’ exports. There would, however, be the opportunity to import more Australia’s free-trade partners other than China. Austrade is restricted to promoting exports.

Australia has few alternative suppliers for many of our imports, particularly in telecommunications, computing and renewable energy generation.

There is no alternative market for our biggest export, iron ore, while China has no other source of iron ore of comparable scale. Supplies from the Simondou mine in Guinea, which is under construction, are more likely to replace high-cost Chinese iron ore mines, bringing down the world price, than Australian ore.

Both federal and state governments depend heavily on revenue from the resource sector. Last year, it delivered $55 billion in corporate tax payments (equivalent to the defence budget), and $31 billion more in royalty payments to the states.

As China tries harder to collect data, we must try harder to protect data

China is stepping up efforts to force foreign companies to hand over valuable data while strengthening its own defences. Some of the information it’s looking for would give it greater opportunities for espionage or political interference in other countries.

Australia and other countries need to follow the lead of the United States, which on 21 October proposed rules that would regulate and even prohibit transfers of data containing the personal or medical information of its citizens to foreign entities.

Recent developments from inside China support the idea that the country is refocusing on bulk data, both to aid its intelligence operations and to protect itself from potential adversaries.

China has reformed its domestic legal environment to both protect itself and collect information with intelligence value. A new Data Security Law allows Chinese officials to broadly define ‘core state’ data and ‘important’ data while also banning any company operating inside China from providing data stored in China to overseas agencies without government approval. Firms over a certain size must also have a cell of the Chinese Communist Party to more closely integrate ‘Party leadership into all aspects of corporate governance’, including cybersecurity and data management.

The Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council have decreed that the National Data Administration will manage every source of public data by 2030.

The Ministry of State Security has prohibited Western companies from receiving geospatial information from Chinese companies and required companies to take down idle devices to reduce the threat of Western espionage. And Chinese nationals will shortly be unable to access the internet without verifying their identity by facial recognition and their national ID number.

In early October, a report by the Irish Council of Civil Liberties (ICCL) exposed the world of real-time bidding data, where the ads displayed when you go online are the result of an automated bidding process based on your browsing history and precise location. The ICCL report raised concerns that these kinds of analytics could identify people’s political leanings, sexual preferences, mental health state and even the drinks they like. That data has then been sold to companies operating in China.

Beijing’s recent activities in the digital world remind us that even the most mundane and trivial data about a person can have intelligence value—for example, in recruiting agents, guessing passwords and tracking the movements of targets. China’s expansive spying regime, which mobilises countless private entities and citizens, threatens to overwhelm Western intelligence services. That spying regime now has access to more information to inform decisions.

China’s latest moves draw our attention to the peculiar vulnerability of Australia in the region, especially among the AUKUS triad. Australian privacy law does not carry the same type of protections as British and US laws. Australia has neither a constitutional nor statutory right to privacy, and its key piece of legislative protection has provisions dating back to the 1980s. Despite receiving the results of a comprehensive review of the Privacy Act more than 18 months ago, the government has been sluggish to adopt any reforms that might help protect us from China’s data-harvesting practices.

The motivation for China to collect personal data in Australia has risen since we entered the AUKUS agreement in 2021. But the government isn’t showing enough interest in securing it against foreign manipulation and theft. Consider, too, that other intelligence players, such as India and Russia, are just as likely to join in.

Australia should take a leaf out of the US playbook on countering Chinese interference in its sovereign data. Since February 2024, the United States has been keen to regulate the sharing of information with foreign entities, starting with an executive order signed by President Joe Biden. The rules that Biden proposed on 21 October would ban data brokerage with foreign countries and only allow certain data to be shared with entities that adopt strict data security practices.

Beyond that, there is a growing need for industry and especially academia to adopt stronger security postures. Posting travel plans or political views on Facebook or Instagram might seem innocuous, but if it’s done by someone in a position of power or with access to valuable information, the individual’s vulnerability to espionage dramatically increases. As a society, we all need to take a little more notice and a little more care with what we are sharing online.

China’s fishy behaviour demands a rethink on Southern Ocean

A new element of strategic competition is emerging in the Southern Ocean—in Australia’s backyard—in the form of Beijing’s push to control and exploit fisheries. The situation demands that we bolster capability while also cultivating consensus on the need to revise agreements to match the strategic realities of today.

Last week, the 43rd meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) failed to establish either new fisheries agreements, or new protected marine zones in the Southern Ocean. CCAMLR hasn’t established a new marine conservation area since 2016. Worse, the meeting failed even to renew management agreements already in place.

CCAMLR was established in 1982 with an objective to conserve Antarctic and Southern Ocean marine life. It isa central component of the Antarctic Treaty system. Australia proudly publicises its role, beyond hosting the CCAMLR secretariat, as chasing the ‘important related goal [of enhancing] Australia’s influence in the Antarctic Treaty system [and maintaining] Australia’s reputation as a responsible manager of marine resources’.

But with food security a rising strategic priority for Beijing, it is looking to more fully exploit the waters of the Southern Ocean. Recent court rulings in China underscore the central role so-called ‘distant water fisheries’ (DWF) have in Beijing’s long-term security strategy. Earlier this year, China’s highest court awarded subsidies to one DWF enterprise ‘on the grounds that fishing in international waters is a strategic national priority’.

Krill is at the heart of a resource race in the Southern Ocean. The tiny, shrimp-like crustaceans are foundational to Antarctic and Southern Ocean marine life, and indeed are a key component of the global food chain. In recent years, the economic value of krill has been (re)discovered thanks to the boom in the global health supplement sector.

China has the largest distant water fishing fleet on earth. According to its own 2022 white paper on the Development of Distant Water Fisheries, China has 177 approved enterprises and 2551 vessels in the DWF sector operating on the high seas around the world. And that’s just what Beijing tells us about.

China is also working to popularise the notion of ‘sustainable use’ of fishery resources. Deployment of research vessels to map resource deposits is normalised daily business, often branded as an activity to help understand any protective requirements of the Southern Ocean. Untangling the strategies of resource use from efforts of resource protection is onerous.

Significantly, last week’s CCAMLR meeting was the first since Beijing inked new laws for China’s Coast Guard (CCG). Revisions to CCG law came into effect in June 2024, including new powers to arrest and detain foreigners undertaking ‘illegal violation in waters under China’s jurisdiction’ for up to 60 days without trial. But strikingly it does not define waters under China’s jurisdiction. Would the Southern Ocean fall under the expanded notion of CCG jurisdiction as part of China’s ‘national security interests’?

Furthermore, CCG law supports the creation of ‘temporary maritime security zones’ for its military’s use of the sea. Relevant to recent CCAMLR developments, it codifies Beijing’s intent to protect ‘important fishery waters’ and ‘fishery production operations’.

For decades, China has worked to lay foundations—indeed its own definitions of precedents—for its claims in the South China Sea. The potential for China to apply its CCG law to the Southern Ocean is obvious.

When it comes to international cooperation, we can blame certain states for frustrating consensus, but this does not mean we should walk away from such bodies as CCAMLR. There is merit in engaging even for performative reasons—that is, showing up and looking interested—as many other states do, so long as we are building our capacity to defend and deter with credible naval presence in the background. Or perhaps more aptly for maritime capability stretched Australia—pooling our kit with like-minded states.

Beijing is deliberately blurring the lines between using and protecting living resources in the Southern Ocean. It is consistently vetoing or blocking new marine protection efforts in CCAMLR by stating it needs to undertake more research. Want to protect a stretch of the Southern Ocean? Beijing needs to see or undertake scientific research supporting the call for protection.

Then there are questions as to the identity of personnel on China’s super-trawlers already active in the Southern Ocean. While we know China’s Coast Guard is mandated to protect these assets and their operations, could these fishermen also don military uniforms to execute the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic endeavours? This is surely not implausible.

Consensus bodies like CCAMLR are failing because international dynamics have evolved beyond the 1980s when they were established. Therefore our thinking must also evolve. Considering our AUKUS partners share a litany of strategic interests in the Southern Ocean, perhaps it is time to plan a ‘polar pillar’ for AUKUS. This could deliver technological enhancements from next-gen extreme-weather remote sensors to unmanned aerial vehicles and, of course, enhanced geospatial intelligence cooperation. Hopefully we can get creative and have some viable solutions to act on before the China’s first ‘temporary maritime security zone’ pops up in the Southern Ocean.

Don’t give a free pass to Beijing for its aggressive behaviour

The whole point of the post-World War II system of international rules and norms was that large countries, great powers, could not just do whatever they wanted.

The post-War order is meant to provide a check on the untrammelled power of the powerful, whether through military invasions or more subtle ways of bending the will of other countries—methods such as interference, coercion and malicious cyber intrusions.

Yet when asked recently how Australia would address China’s influence in the Pacific, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said, ‘China’s doing what great powers do, and great powers try to lift their influence and expand their influence in the region that they wish.’

To be sure, foreign policy is tough. Every country in the region and many beyond it are trying to navigate this most tricky of relationships—a great power flexing its muscle aggressively but with whom we are all deeply economically entwined. Yet that does not mean we should minimise or excuse China’s behaviour when it bulldozes rules and norms so carefully established to maintain stability and security.

This is not a case of picking one’s battles. China is waging its hybrid warfare on all fronts and setting precedents through our silence—Beijing’s overreaction to a statement on human rights by an Australian official in the UN in the past fortnight shows that Beijing hasn’t budged an inch in the past two years.

It is a calculated strategy to make Australia pull any punches at a higher level on something like human rights abuses in Xinjiang. This isn’t stabilisation—it’s Beijing saying that Australia will toe the line or else.

By limiting all but the most unavoidable criticisms of China to statements delivered by officials rather than ministers, Australia has been offering Beijing a compromise. Instead of taking that as a win, China continues to bite back hard. Fortunately this should serve only to highlight that no such compromises should be made.

The type of influence China exercises is not something we can accept as simply ‘what great powers do’. It launched a cyber attack on the Pacific Islands Forum, spreads online disinformation in the Pacific to undermine democracies and weaken Pacific partnerships, sought security agreements that lack public transparency, and undertaken various other malicious activities—such as hybrid and grey zone operations.

And that’s just in the Pacific—China is carrying out this malicious activity globally, not to mention being the main supporter enabling Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Of course, other significant powers seek influence, but responsible nations don’t behave like this. The United States for instance, as the longstanding international superpower, has built enormous global influence. But—notwithstanding its share of mistakes—it has done so overwhelmingly by cultivating alliances and genuine partnerships based on shared values and a common desire to improve conditions in the world and to the benefit of the citizens of their partner nations.

Think about it: the US has dozens of genuine friends around the world. China doesn’t have friends; it has subordinates, captive debtors, vassals.

We should remember that the trend in international politics has been to curb the kind of crass and predatory political behaviour we see from Beijing. Until about a century back, colonialism and conquests of other states were considered normal. But ideas of what constitutes acceptable international behaviour have changed dramatically, as seen through the development of international institutions, laws and norms. They don’t always work, but the international community should strive to do better, not revert to letting great powers engage in behaviour reminiscent of an earlier age.

The climate of peace and commerce that has resulted from multinational cooperation has benefited few countries as much as China with its stellar growth over recent decades. There have been continuous efforts in recent times by Indo-Pacific powers to strengthen the rules-based order and prevent it from eroding, including through the use of international law to adjudicate disputes, as the Philippines did in 2016 when it used international arbitration to resolve its dispute with China—which Beijing went on to ignore.

China’s behaviour has been completely at odds to this trend. Its worldview is based on dividing the international community into big and small powers—in which small powers should know their place in the international hierarchy. This world view does not permit peaceful settlement of disputes. Instead, the strong push their way through. Such a view should be opposed and called out, not rationalised.

Wong went on to say that the Pacific is now the field for a ‘permanent contest’. That much is true, but we cannot regard it through a false equivalence. The work that Australia does as a partner of choice, and the support we get from friends including the US, are worlds apart from the malign influence that China seeks to wield.

It is possible that at some stage, China will become so strong, and the relative balance of power so skewed, that others will not be able to push back. At that stage, countries in the region would have to find some other modus vivendi with China. But as long as they are able to, it is perfectly natural for them to push back.

Indeed, what would be unnatural would be for countries in the region to simply throw up their hands and accept Chinese hegemony. In international politics, aggressive behaviour must be countered, not explained away.

‘Stabilisation’ is helping Beijing stall for time

The recent visit by Premier Li Qiang was characteristic of what is becoming a clear trend in Chinese leaders’ travel, akin to the proverbial arsonist-cum-firefighter, who causes a problem they can then heroically fix.

Li gave Australia plenty of opportunities to thank him in person for fixing the issues that China has created, from coercive trade measures to the removal and return of giant pandas from our zoos.

These are certainly areas ‘where we can co-operate’—to borrow from the Australian government’s language. Indeed, they are often areas in which we already were co-operating until Beijing decided to demonstrate its displeasure.

And the fact of the diplomatic push by Beijing points to an emerging agenda on Beijing’s part: what some in the West have labelled ‘stabilisation’ is really more like stalling for time. This gives Beijing more breathing space to make sense of the new post-pandemic world and assess the implications it will have for its own global ambitions.

Beijing likely knows it needs time to stabilise its own position and power. To do this, it appears to be seeking to improve the image of its international relationships, particularly with countries in the West.

The wolf warriors have gotten quieter as China’s diplomats are seeking out any area of cooperation with their foreign counterparts. Huge efforts have been made to show there can be ‘mutually beneficial and win-win results’ from dealing with China on its terms, where Beijing makes few meaningful concessions on areas of serious disagreement.

Li Qiang’s visits to Australia and New Zealand are a prime example of this pattern of behaviour. It generated much publicity over the smaller areas where there is opportunity for cooperation: visa-free travel to China, and a series of MOUs on climate, trade and research. But the more substantive areas of geopolitics, on which there is legitimate and important disagreement, were relegated largely to private conversations.

This pattern is also present in Xi Jinping’s recent visits abroad. Last November’s summit between presidents Biden and Xi resulted in an agreement for the resumption of the talks Beijing had walked out of after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. The return of giant pandas to Washington National Zoo also featured.

In May, France’s President Emmanuel Macron managed to get a joint statement on the Middle East condemning ‘all forms of terrorism’. However, at least publicly, little progress was made on the much more pressing issue of Beijing’s enabling of Russia’s on-going war in Ukraine.

China’s leaders are likely also waiting to see how for elections in several countries unfold over the course of 2024, including the US presidency.

Who will be the American president for the next four years is a variable Beijing must factor into its foreign policy ambition of displacing the United States as the world’s preeminent global power. Why waste valuable time and resources now when a US president less interested in America’s role in the world might be just around the corner?

From Beijing’s perspective, it is better not to waste precious energy on adversarial relationships everywhere, and rather to focus on not taking a single step back on the core interests. Australia is just not as important as the Philippines or Taiwan right now.

And beyond the uncertainty China faces abroad, it also faces problems on the home front.

There’s growing pressure on China’s leadership because the country’s reemergence via three years of pandemic isolation has not been smooth sailing. Its economy is much weaker than it had expected, and segments of Chinese society are more jaded about whether Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese Dream’ is going to deliver on its promise of national rejuvenation by mid-century. Add to this the seemingly chaotic international environment and Beijing is almost certainly aware of ‘the high winds and choppy waters’ it now faces in the world.

But China is a master of scale. It can keep other countries bogged down by an army of diplomats on the small issues on which co-operation is possible. This includes tying up Australia in the minutiae of trade exports restrictions for years. All the while, the bigger areas of disagreement just seem too daunting.

If anything, the Li visit shows that Beijing is content for the time being with a relationship with countries like Australia that is more about great photo opportunities, and less about reaching substantive agreement on the harder issues.

There is little evidence that prioritising engagement for engagement’s sake is getting us closer on the big issues ‘where we must disagree’—the other half of the Australian government’s diplomatic formulation. This goes for coercion of Taiwan, aggressive tactics in the South China Sea, and support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Arguably these areas are getting worse as so-called stabilisation gets better.

Australia has been dealing with Beijing since the 1970s, and with Xi Jinping as its leader since 2012. The time for official visits as primarily about rapport-building should be over.

Fewer visits and MOUs would give our diplomats more time to work on the areas where we must disagree with China—not to mention providing fewer things for Beijing to set fire to in future.

Tag Archive for: Australia-China Relations

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