Tag Archive for: PLA-N

Societal resilience is the best answer to Chinese warships

The Australian government has prioritised enhancing Australia’s national resilience for many years now, whether against natural disasters, economic coercion or hostile armed forces. However, the public and media response to the presence of Chinese naval vessels in the Tasman Sea over the past two weeks suggests that more work must be done to strengthen the resilience of Australian society.

Political leaders and senior officials have repeatedly stressed that ‘Australia faces the most complex and challenging strategic environment since the Second World War’, but recent commentary suggests that Australia as a society isn’t yet mentally adjusted to such circumstances.

While the public should be aware of China’s military signalling, and attempts to antagonise or even intimidate, we shouldn’t overreact.

Yes, these activities are unexpected. Yes, certain elements have been conducted unsafely and unprofessionally, notably the live fire drills which were carried out with extremely short notice and disrupted nearby civilian air traffic. Nevertheless, such activities are legal, relatively commonplace and likely to occur more frequently as China develops a more capable, expeditionary navy.

Taking the bait and choosing to be provoked only serves to justify Beijing’s common overreactions when non-Chinese ships operate legally in waters close to China.

Moreover, if Australian society—or, specifically, the voting public—regards activities such as sailing Chinese ships in our exclusive economic zone to be a threat, then the scope of government reaction is restricted: ministers may be under pressure to be more strident than they should be and react in ways that are not conducive to our long-term interests.

None of this excuses China’s blatantly aggressive acts, for example repeated hostile aircraft interceptions, endangering Australian aircraft and crews by releasing chaff or flares in front of them or using sonar against Navy divers. These are, and should be, condemned.

Denying China the headlines and propaganda victory it craves would clearly show how extreme Chinese measures have been.

Drawing on the Cold War experience, NATO naval vessels routinely shadowed Soviet warships in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Oceans to monitor their behaviour and obtain intelligence. Similarly, we should expect Chinese intelligence-gathering vessels to lurk nearby large-scale training exercises such as Talisman Sabre, as they did in 2023.

In today’s context of widespread strategic competition, we should expect these kinds of activities to be just as commonplace and therefore try to inform and educate the public accordingly.

The threat posed by China is not going away. Nor are its naval and coast guard vessels, whose numbers are rapidly rising, and its global ambitions are growing.

While the political drama that these events may provide is undoubtedly tempting in the lead-up to the federal election due by May (a coincidence, or an attempt to sow discord?) it is shortsighted to seek partisan advantage from a scenario that will be repeated frequently for maybe decades to come. That merely encourages similar behaviour from the other side of politics when governments change.

The priority should instead be on building a more resilient society that is better equipped to respond to complex—and confronting—situations. Part of that is ensuring our society is better informed and less susceptible to propaganda, misinformation and disinformation, none of which is served by overreacting to routine, if unprofessional, naval activities.

Beyond rhetoric, an important dimension of building resilience is ensuring that the Australian Defence Force is suitably equipped to respond to such scenarios. It would give the public confidence that their armed forces are capable of monitoring and responding as required.

As other contributors have noted, the Australian navy’s capability shortfall must be addressed. China has proven adept at using maritime means to intimidate, destabilise and coerce its neighbours in Southeast Asia. We must be mindful, and prepared, in case these techniques are applied in our immediate region.

Should China establish a base nearby or pursue more regular deployments to Australia and the Pacific, ADF resources would rapidly become strained if the level of response expected to every Chinese navy transit matched the tone set by the current reporting.

Resilient societies and polities are those that know when to respond forcefully, and when to keep their powder dry. For the sake of navigating the long-term challenge of a regional environment defined by strategic competition, Australia needs to learn and apply this lesson quickly.

Chinese navy transit: opinions in The Strategist

Views in The Strategist on the recent Chinese warship deployment near Australia range from ‘get used to it’, to a warning against overreaction and a welcoming of the resulting debate over defence. Here are introductions and links to the articles:

China will continue to conduct unsafe military manoeuvres and we can expect to see more advanced warships in our region, writes Joe Keary.

While the frequency and duration of deployments have been limited by a lack of support ships and overseas support bases, Chinese military developments show its goal of a navy capable of projecting power into our region and beyond.

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.

China’s demonstration of its advanced naval capabilities highlights Australia’s shortcomings, writes Jennifer Parker.

While China’s fleet has grown in number and capability, Australia’s fleet has aged and shrunk. This leaves Australia unprepared to protect its maritime security interests.

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.

The deployment to nearby international waters raises the question of what Australia could do if China sortied into its waters, writes Ian Langford.

In the short-term, it should step up equipping the Australian Army for maritime defence.

Despite the fleet of ships remaining in international waters and the comments from many that this activity raises no concerns for our future defence capability plans, it nonetheless does reflect on our current military capacity and highlights the urgent need for ongoing improvements in force projection, sea control and, where necessary, maritime strike.

An Australian overreaction to China’s deployment jeopardises our own necessary activities in the South China Sea and North-East Asia, writes Jennifer Parker in another article.

Australia’s best response would be to expand our own maritime capabilities to effectively exercise our own rights and protect our interests.

The freedom of the seas is fundamental to our security as a maritime trading nation. Claims that China’s warships shouldn’t be operating in our exclusive economic zone or conducting live-fire exercises on the high seas undermines this principle, giving China a propaganda win to challenge our necessary deployments to North-East Asia and the South China Sea—routes that carry two-thirds of our maritime trade.

But the Chinese navy’s activation of political debate over defence policy is welcome, writes Euan Graham.

Noting legal reciprocity of freedom of navigation, countries have a duty to act professionally. The lack of advance warning and the flotilla’s transit were a message to which the Australian government should respond.

…ordinary Australians are quite entitled to read hostility in China’s intentions. The flotilla was not invited here, and China didn’t notify us it was coming. Carrying out live fire exercises in the Tasman Sea with little or no notice, as the flotilla did on 21 February, wasn’t just unprofessional; it sent an unmistakably coercive signal to Australia and New Zealand.

China has long used naval transits to send a message, but the pace has increased in recent years, writes Joe Keary.

They are known to monitor exercises, float around defence facilities and appear around election time. The expansion of activities reflects China’s ambition to grow the strength and capability of its navy and to project power into our region.

Together, these deployments paint a picture of a country that is undertaking sweeping efforts to transform its navy into a formidable blue water force, capable of regularly projecting hard and soft power to our region.

China’s navy sends a steady drumbeat of ships around Australia

China’s deployment of a potent surface action group around Australia over the past two weeks is unprecedented but not unique. Over the past few years, China’s navy has deployed a range of vessels in Australia’s vicinity, including state-of-the-art warships, replenishment ships, intelligence-gathering ships, survey ships, satellite support ships and hospital ships.

Together, these deployments paint a picture of a country that is undertaking sweeping efforts to transform its navy into a formidable blue water force, capable of regularly projecting hard and soft power to our region.

China’s navy, now the largest in the world by number of vessels, has a vast range of ships that can undertake a broad scope of tasks and we have seen nearly all varieties of ship in our region in the past five years.

In October, China put on a show of force in the South Pacific by sending two warships to Port Vila in Vanuatu. One was a Type 055 cruiser, marking the first known deployment of this advanced warship class to the South Pacific. The deployment was intended to send a clear signal of China’s ability to project power beyond its traditional areas of influence.

Unlike the current action group circumnavigating Australia, Chinese warships are not typically accompanied by replenishment ships (the exception being a 2019 deployment that appeared in Sydney Harbour after conducting operations in the Gulf of Aden). The addition of replenishment ships to Chinese action groups enables greater force projection into the Pacific.

Chinese Type 815 intelligence ships are regular visitors to our region. Since 2017, China has been sending at least one such ship to Australia’s north to electronically eavesdrop on our biennial Talisman Sabre military exercise with the United States and other partners.  At the most recent Senate estimates hearing, Chief of Defence Force Admiral David Johnston noted that an intelligence ship had travelled as far as Sydney after the 2023 Talisman Sabre exercise.

China is also developing a habit of sending naval ships to our region during election periods. While many commentators have understood the significance of the timing of the current deployment around Australia, it has yet to be noted that China’s navy was also present in the weeks before the 2022 federal election. In May that year, China sent an intelligence ship to Australia’s north-west, including near the Harold E Holt Communication Station, a sensitive defence facility near Exmouth, Western Australia. At the time, that was already significant. Now China has upped the ante in 2025.

China’s navy sends a range of vessels to the Pacific for port calls and good-will visits. Last year China sent an air-defence destroyer to Tonga, joining 11 other navies in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Tonga Royal Navy. We now see regular Chinese navy visits to the Pacific, especially to the Pacific island countries that have militaries: Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Tonga.

China also pursues soft power in the Pacific through the deployment of the Peace Ark. The Peace Ark is one of two hospital ships that China’s navy uses to provide health services as part its soft-power diplomacy in the region. In 2023, the Peace Ark paid friendly visits to Kiribati, Tonga, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and East Timor. It stayed for around a week in each port, offering free medical services to local populations.

China’s navy also has a range of ships that are used for tracking satellites and intercontinental ballistic missiles—large ships with impressive arrays of dishes and scanners. Tracking ships of the Yuan Wang class regularly operate in the southern Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean west of Australia. Since China lacks ground stations elsewhere, these ships give it the ability to track launches and satellites that are not over its territory. (China operated a ground station in Kiribati for six years, but it closed in 2003.)

Finally, China has developed the world’s largest fleet of civilian research vessels. While many undertake missions for peaceful purposes, they also provide China’s military with important data about the world’s oceans. The Hidden Reach project of the Center for Strategic and International Studies does an amazing job of tracking these vessels and their ties to China’s military.

We are seeing more of these vessels in our vicinity, including off the north-west shelf of Australia. In early 2020, officials tracked the movements of a Chinese research vessel as it conducted deepwater surveys near Christmas Island. A Defence official said the ship was mapping waters used by Australian submarines to get to the South China Sea. It also spent much time in waters not far from the Harold E Holt Communication Station.

Like the current deployment, China’s naval activities in our region are consistent with international law. Operating a range of ships is also not unique to China. Most large countries, such as the US, Russia and France, maintain a variety of warships, space support vessels and research vessels that support military activities. However, the increasing number and variety of ships in our region sends a strong signal of China’s ability and intent to project hard and soft power.

This is our new reality. Monitoring and managing China’s growing naval presence in our region will place increasing strain on our military for years to come.

China’s naval deployment should invigorate Australia’s election debate

The Australian government’s underreaction to China’s ongoing naval circumnavigation of Australia is a bigger problem than any perceived overreaction in public commentary. Some politicisation of the issue before a general election is natural in a democracy—and welcome if it means Canberra’s defence and China policy settings feature more prominently in debates ahead of the election due by May.

How times have changed. Fifteen years ago, Australia was worried that the quadrilateral partnership with India, Japan and the US would spook China, making it worry that it was being strategically encircled by the US and its regional allies and partners. Wind the clock forward to 2025 and China’s navy is off Perth, circumnavigating Australia with a potent surface action group.

This is the furthest south that a Chinese naval flotilla has ventured. This one is composed of a cruiser, a frigate and a replenishment ship—above the surface, at least.

Naval analysts have urged Australia to temper its reaction to the deployment because Canberra has a reciprocal interest in freedom of navigation in China’s maritime periphery. This is certainly a factor, and to some extent puts the government in a bind. The Chinese navy has a clear legal right to operate in waters close to Australia, even if it is going very far out of its way to make a point. That includes the right to conduct live-fire exercises.

But what point is Beijing making? Even while noting legal reciprocity in freedom of navigation, ordinary Australians are quite entitled to read hostility in China’s intentions. The flotilla was not invited here, and China didn’t notify us it was coming. Carrying out live fire exercises in the Tasman Sea with little or no notice, as the flotilla did on 21 February, wasn’t just unprofessional; it sent an unmistakably coercive signal to Australia and New Zealand.

By sending its navy all the way around Australia, the Chinese Communist Party is signalling that all of Australia lies within reach and is part of its area of direct military interest. It is showing it can project combat power and potentially hold Australia’s maritime communications at risk even though it lacks a base close to the continent. (And we should not think that Beijing has given up on getting one.)

The initial response from Australia’s government was muted and, on the issue of whether China had given warning of its live fire drills, muddled. This, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s evident desire to downplay the significance of the deployment will have been noted by Beijing, which with the deployment is testing and comparing reactions in Canberra, Wellington and Washington.

The United States, under new political management, has so far stayed silent on the deployment, despite the concurrent presence in Australia of the chief of its Indo-Pacific Command and a US nuclear submarine at HMAS Stirling, near Perth. There is still time for the US to show its support this week, before the task group completes its tour of Australia and returns to the South China Sea through the Indonesian archipelago, as it can be expected to do.

New Zealand’s initial response was conspicuously better than Australia’s. Defence Minister Judith Collins linked China’s motivations to its strategic quest for greater influence and access to marine resources in the South Pacific, uncomfortably underscored by a recent deal between Beijing and the Cook Islands that blindsided Wellington.

A firmer Australian government reaction could have set the tone for a less divisive political debate. Canberra’s contention that it has stabilised bilateral relations with China looks increasingly questionable in light of the unsubtle ‘or else’ message trailing in the Chinese navy’s wake as it sails around Australia. China’s coercion of Canberra since 2020 has never stopped; it has simply taken different forms.

Australians and New Zealanders should not fall into the trap of viewing China’s naval deployment to their neighbourhood in isolation and adopting a defensive mindset. In fact, the Chinese military is mounting concurrent drills at several locations, including near Japan, Taiwan and the Gulf of Tonkin, close to Vietnam. Beijing is ramping up its military presence across the Western Pacific to calibrate regional reactions, most likely with an interest in probing the strength of US alliances and security partnerships early on in the second Trump administration.

The more Australia and other countries speak with one voice on China, the harder it will be for Beijing to exploit potential wedges.

This will not be the last time a Chinese surface action group undertakes a three-ocean deployment around Australia. But the current deployment may turn political debate to defence spending increases, the hollowed-out state of the Royal Australian Navy’s surface capabilities and the government’s supposed stabilisation policy settings. If it does, we may owe a debt of gratitude to the Chinese navy.

For a faster solution to nearby maritime threats, look to the Australian Army

China’s not-so-subtle attempt at gunboat diplomacy over the past two weeks has encountered various levels of indignation in Australia and throughout the region. Many have pointed out that the passage of a three-ship naval task group about 500 kilometres off Australia’s east coast took place in international waters, a comment echoed in China, where officials have accused Australian politicians of ‘deliberately hyping’ the issue.

Many commentators have seized this opportunity to highlight the failure of Australia’s naval shipbuilding program over generations to meet the necessary ship production numbers for national security. They also point out that the current surface-ship building program will not take effect until the 2030s.

This misses a deeper point, however: what if the Chinese navy did sortie into our waters, or worse still, decided to interfere with our air and maritime movements by declaring, for instance, an air defence identification zone, similar to what occurs in the waters off Taiwan every time the Taiwanese disturb the Chinese Communist Party? Could we take any action?

The answer to this question goes to the core of Australian defence policy in 2025.

Military strategy is often described as ‘ends, ways, and means’, which serves as a useful model for understanding the application of strategy. In this context, the ends represent the ambitions of the 2024 National Defence Strategy, which aims to deter any hostile acts against Australian territory, its people and international interests. Deterrence is achieved through effective diplomacy, a strong economy and, in this case, military hard power.

With deterrence established in policy as an end, the ways logically follow. Referring to our observations from the past two weeks, ways would manifest as an operational concept or plan to deny the Chinese open access to our home waters. This might involve an Australian-flagged maritime task group that could be rapidly deployed and capable of shadowing and deterring the Chinese. Typically, this task group would consist of frigates, submarines and supply ships. Other methods would include air power, such as maritime surveillance and strike aircraft from the Royal Australian Air Force.

With ends and ways established, the final element of applying military strategy is the means, which essentially represent the forces and platforms necessary to carry out military operations. Here, the Australian Defence Force may face some challenges in the period leading up to 2030, as much of the capability being acquired by the government through its National Defence Strategy is not scheduled to become operational before the end of the decade. While the National Defence Strategy outlines ends, ways and means for the early 2030s, there is some risk in generating the tools for military strategy in the interim.

This brings us back to the dilemma posed by the Chinese naval group off Australia over the past two weeks. Despite the fleet of ships remaining in international waters and the comments from many that this activity raises no concerns for our future defence capability plans, it nonetheless does reflect on our current military capacity and highlights the urgent need for ongoing improvements in force projection, sea control and, where necessary, maritime strike.

More ships, submarines and long-range missiles will be essential for future solutions beyond 2030. But what about the present? One potential solution is to use the Australian Army, whose advancements in developing a future force focused on Australia’s maritime and littoral approaches are often overlooked in political discussions regarding the nation’s defence forces.

In the realm of land-based maritime strike, the government could accept some capability risk to expedite the acquisition of land-based anti-ship missiles. These systems can deter any foreign navy or future hostile power from entering home waters. The army could deter a blue-water navy in local waters, much as the Ukrainian Army has driven off the Russian Black Sea Fleet. While the Pacific Ocean is vast and land-based strike has its limitations, this strategy offers an immediate capability for defending home waters and addressing recent events, in contrast to ships and missiles not scheduled to arrive until 2030.

With the rapid acquisition of an army system to complement developments in the navy and the air force, Australia could calibrate its ends, ways and means both now and beyond 2030 as major projects are delivered.

The presence last week of a Chinese naval task group off our east coast in international waters demonstrates the sudden and dramatic pressure the Chinese navy can exert on our neighbourhood. Australia must implement an effective military strategy now; it cannot wait until 2030.

China wins from Australian overreaction to warship presence

The deployment of a Chinese naval task group in our region is clearly aimed at sending a message and testing Australia’s responses—not only on the military front, but socially and politically. The worst misstep would be to overreact and hand China a propaganda win that could undermine Australia’s legitimate military activities in the South China Sea and North-East Asia.

Australia has long thrived on the freedom and prosperity we’ve enjoyed since World War II. Our distance from Europe’s and the Middle East’s flashpoints made conflict seem remote. We’ve ingrained the notion that while our people fight in distant conflicts, the threat never reaches home.

Yet the deployment of a Chinese naval task group off our east coast has exposed our vulnerabilities as a maritime nation reliant on trade. While this reality is felt acutely, our proper response is to invest in the ships, aircraft and submarines needed to safeguard our maritime interests—not to manufacture a crisis that undermines our societal resilience and political capacity to respond to genuine challenges.

Australia isn’t on a major trade route or a transit point. Naval task groups rarely operate in our region—unless they’re visiting Australia—so a Chinese task group is especially notable. Deployed more than 8000 kilometres from China’s coast, this three-ship task group—including one of the world’s most advanced warships—was clearly meant to send a message.

Under international law, China’s warships can operate on the high seas (beyond 200 nautical miles from our coast). They can also conduct exercises within Australia’s exclusive economic zone (up to 200 nautical miles from our coast). They can even operate in our territorial sea (within 12 nautical miles of our coast), provided their transit is continuous, expeditious and does not disrupt Australia’s good order. This isn’t legal semantics—it’s a fundamental aspect of the freedom of the seas that Australia regularly exercises through our naval deployments.

While it may be surprising to see naval task groups conducting live-fire exercises in our region, warships—including Australia’s—regularly do so on long deployments for training, maintaining skills or a myriad of other reasons. This is simply what warships do.

China’s gunnery firing took place on the high seas, about 640 kilometres (340 nautical miles) from our coast—the distance from Canberra to Melbourne. China is well within its rights to conduct such exercises without informing Australia or New Zealand.

While no international law requires it, best practice, having undertaken many gunnery firings at sea, is that warships maintain at least 18 kilometres (10 nautical miles) from known civilian air routes during live-fire exercises. Air Services Australia reported that 49 aircraft had to be diverted because of the Chinese warships’ firing exercise. Clearly, these warships were too close to these flight paths.

This diversion is a nuisance, but aircraft are routinely diverted for various reasons, and there’s no evidence they were at risk. The Chinese warships’ radars would have continuously tracked the aircraft, ensuring they stopped the gunnery if the aircraft approached their safety zone—just as any responsible warship would.

Warships should also issue warnings to civilian aircraft and vessels several hours in advance—and at regular intervals—during the exercise. It remains unclear how early Chinese warships issued this warning, but we know from Senate estimates that it was first heard by a Virgin Airlines aircraft 30 minutes after the warships began their drills.

The Chinese warships’ close proximity to civilian air routes—and their apparent failure to provide timely warnings—deserves diplomatic rebuke. However, their presence and live-fire exercise on the high seas do not.

The freedom of the seas is fundamental to our security as a maritime trading nation. Claims that China’s warships shouldn’t be operating in our exclusive economic zone or conducting live-fire exercises on the high seas undermines this principle, giving China a propaganda win to challenge our necessary deployments to North-East Asia and the South China Sea—routes that carry two-thirds of our maritime trade.

This is not a crisis. Treating it as one with over-the-top indignation diminishes our capacity to tackle real crises as the region deteriorates. Moreover, since this deployment was meant to test us, it signals to China that we lack societal resilience and a genuine perspective on what is a threat.

If the Chinese naval task group deployment is meant to signal that they can operate in our region, sustain a presence and threaten our critical sea supply lines, how should we respond to the vulnerability we’ve felt these past two weeks? We must respond by heeding the message—mitigating our vulnerabilities and investing in our maritime capability. At our most challenging strategic moment since WWII, our current surface combatant fleet is the smallest and oldest we’ve had since 1950.

Our warships have limited endurance at sea due to inadequate numbers of replenishment ships, and our ability to protect sea lanes from mines is also limited—to name but a few of our challenges. We must address this and swiftly, and that means having a hard look at our defence spending.

At only 2 percent of GDP, defence spending falls well short of our Cold War average of 2.7 percent. It’s also time to ramp up our industrial capacity and engage in genuine discussions about societal and industrial mobilisation. That means, if we were to be in a conflict, how would we mobilise the civilian population to support our forces and home defence, and how would we mobilise industries to produce what we need to sustain the conflict?

We must respond by enhancing our preparedness and military capability, not by handing China a propaganda victory that undermines our ability to tackle real crises and the fundamental principle of freedom of the seas.

While conflict in our region isn’t inevitable, the threat is real and demands a measured response underpinned by preparedness, investment and partnerships. Warships have the right to freedom of navigation. Live gunnery firings are common. Overreaction and panic will only undermine our efforts.

New military dialogue unlikely to change China’s unsafe behaviour

China and Australia agreed last month to set up a new maritime affairs dialogue, but this is unlikely to lead to a reduction in the frequency of unsafe behaviour by the Chinese armed forces.

Australia already has a series of dialogues with the Chinese military. But following a resumption in activity post-COVID, China’s military has been less willing to engage in dialogue with Western countries. China has increasingly used coercive actions to further its strategic objectives, including by challenging Australia’s regional military presence that’s aimed at upholding the rules-based order.

The establishment of a maritime affairs dialogue was an important outcome from Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s visit to Australia from June 15 to 18. A joint statement noted that the dialogue would involve an exchange between Defence organisations.

Behind-the-scenes diplomacy has been central to the Albanese government’s approach to addressing differences with Beijing. The government has left it to officials to make representations to Beijing following unsafe Chinese military behaviour, reserving public comment for only the most serious of incidents. The introduction of a maritime affairs dialogue will continue that approach and allow officials to address differences quietly. It will also create a mechanism that might be used in a crisis, such as a serious incident between militaries.

But Defence already has a series of dialogues with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that allow for exchanges on maritime and other serious issues. Historically, engagement with the PLA has included an annual meeting of senior officials (the Defence Coordination Dialogue) and an annual meeting of defence chiefs (the Defence Strategic Dialogue). These meetings have provided an important opportunity for Australia to exchange views with the PLA’s head international agency, the Office of International Military Coordination, and to speak directly with members of the Central Military Commission, the top decision-making body that oversees the PLA.

Since the freeze in diplomatic relations that began in 2019, only the Defence Coordination Dialogue has resumed, and those talks have been held only once, in March 2023. There have been no other reported calls or meetings between defence chiefs or senior officers. Australia’s defence minister has met annually with his Chinese counterpart since 2021, but those exchanges have been limited to short meetings on the margins of regional forums, such as the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Defence dialogue with China has not mirrored the resumption of formal exchanges in other areas of the bilateral relationship.

Other countries, particularly Western countries, have had a similar experience with the PLA. A study by the US Naval War College shows that China’s defence diplomacy has not returned to pre-Covid levels: it had 66 engagements in 2023, compared with more than 100 in 2019. China also limited the number of senior PLA officials who engage in formal international talks. Just six did so in 2023. They met with officials of 41 countries. At the senior level, meetings with Southeast Asian countries were most frequent, followed by African states and Russia. The Chinese military did not engage with any countries in Western Europe last year, and it met with the US only once.

Since January 2024, there has been an uptick in defence dialogue between the US and China. While few substantive details have emerged, the resumption in dialogue has coincided with a pause in unsafe PLA behaviour towards US military assets. However, in April, then US Indo-Pacific commander Admiral John Aquilino noted that this pause was probably the result of a strategic decision in Beijing, as China looked to stabilise its military sphere and focus on re-energising a slowing economy. Recent unsafe behaviour towards the Australian Defence Force shows that such strategic accommodations have not been extended to this country.

China’s capacity for defence diplomacy may have been disrupted by its having had three defence ministers in three years. However, the trends outlined here also signal a possible change in strategy. The PLA is prioritising engagement with countries where it can best further its strategic goals. Since Australia is evidently not a priority, there appears to be limited scope to engage in regular defence dialogue, build common understanding and hash out differences quietly.

New working-level dialogues are unlikely to discourage China from pursuing its strategic goals and undertaking further unsafe actions against the ADF. Australian effort would be better invested in negotiating directly with members of China’s Central Military Commission. Failing that, Australia should double down on working with partners and consider new ways to deter China’s unsafe military behaviour in the Indo-Pacific.

The Shangri-La dialogues—20 years of agenda setting

The Asia–Pacific’s premier defence dialogue uses the name of the mythical place ‘Shangri-La’, a utopia of peace high in the mountains in the 90-year-old novel Lost Horizon.

Amid the tough talk at the 20th dialogue in Singapore’s Shangri-La Hotel at the weekend, the serenity of that valley was, indeed, a far horizon.

From the first event in 2002, journalists have loved the dichotomy of the dialogue’s title. Happy is the hack who can contrast the sharp realism of Shangri-La defence-speak with the idea of that happy place of peace.

Shangri-La offers a touch of serendipity to a gathering dominated by hard choices and military hardware.

I’ve often written of the division between the name/aim of the dialogue and the strategic realities it confronts, as in my Shangri-La commentary—the myth versus the military—from June 2007. Back then, my lead was the ‘tone and temperature of United States’ military approaches to China’. So plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (‘the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing’).

In his keynote speech this year, Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, reflected that ‘before Shangri-La was an important dialogue or the name of a hotel, it was an old story. The tale of a remote mountain paradise, where time passed more slowly, safely cut off from the cares of the world. Yet for us, as leaders and thinkers and decision-makers, Shangri-La is about dealing with uncertain, uneven, fast-moving complexity.’

The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, got laughs with his line that at Shangri-La ‘the only thing more wide-ranging than the conference agenda is the breakfast buffet.’

I’ve been making the Shangri-La trek since the first dialogue in 2002. I was an invited delegate to that first experiment but have invited myself to most that followed. And so, I have reported on 16 of the 20 dialogues.

Shangri-La is one more proof that Asia does things differently. Here is a defence summit run by a British think tank, taking its title from a hotel chain, generously backed by the Singapore government.

The think-tank DNA means that much of the multilateral action takes place on stage, as defence ministers front public sessions to deliver speeches and take questions. Shangri-La demands no consensus or final communique. The disagreements can be loud and out in the open.

The private action in the hotel’s meeting rooms and corridors involves a packed scramble of bilaterals and minilaterals. It’s quite a sight to see a US defence secretary at the head of a phalanx of admirals and generals and minders, hurrying across the hotel foyer to the next meeting. These days, the Chinese generate an equally impressive retinue.

At this year’s dialogue, the International Institute for Strategic Studies counted 121 bilateral meetings; 54 nations were represented; 34 government ministers attended accompanied by lots of military brass. This brings us to the role of a British think tank, the IISS, at the centre of Asia’s defence dialogue. And the British strategist John Chipman, who created the dialogue.

Chipman has chaired 130 plenary sessions over 20 dialogues, directing traffic with firm politeness and a voice with a distinctive burr on its sibilants. Chipman runs a tight ship. His sessions start promptly and end on time; the generals and admirals quietly marvel at his ability to make their ministers hit their marks and meet the clock. Canada’s Defence Minister Anita Anand told Chipman this year he ran a stellar event: ‘You are really rocking it!’

In its early days, China was deeply suspicious about the Anglo roots of the dialogue. The seniority of the Chinese delegation slowly grew, with the first appearance at Shangri-La by the Chinese defence minister in 2011. Chinese defence ministers adjusted quickly to the unusual experience of being asked hard questions in public, usually shooting back equally hard answers.

The format these days has the US defence secretary address the opening session on Saturday while China’s defence minister takes the same first slot on Sunday. China and the US get a session to themselves (all other defence ministers have to do sessions in threes).

Shangri-La was part of the impetus for ASEAN defence ministers to hold their first group meeting in 2006, and from 2010 to convene the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus, with eight dialogue partners.

Credit IISS with doing something important for Asia that governments are usually supposed to do for themselves. And this is a bit of regional architecture where ASEAN can’t proclaim that it’s in the driver’s seat.

Chipman says that in the late 1990s he discussed the idea of a defence ministers’ meeting in Singapore with Lee Kuan Yew: ‘the guidance I received from the then senior minister was characteristically crisp and challenging: well, give it a go.’

And how it has gone and grown. Chipman calls his creation the ‘best sponsorship agreement that a think tank has ever freely and unilaterally offered to a major international hotel chain.’

Chipman says IISS brings no agenda to the dialogue, offering the chance for spontaneity:

This is not an international-relations conference; it’s a defence ministers’ gathering, where questions of strategy are properly front and centre. Balance of power, arms control, alliance relationships, emerging technologies in doctrines of warfare, confidence-building measures, international law, national interest and international stability are the inevitable key reference points. An important goal everyone here shares is to imagine and then create the conditions for strategic stability.

Starting as head of IISS in October 1993, Chipman is due to step down from the top job this October, when he hits the 30-year mark.

The long engagement with Singapore has shaped Chipman’s next step. When Lee Kuan Yew stepped down as Singapore’s first prime minister, he became senior minister and then minister mentor. Taking a lead from LKY, Chipman says his new job as executive chair of IISS will be a minister mentor role.

LKY never stopped worrying about what he’d created. Rely on John Chipman to do the same for Shangri-La—because more than ever, Asia needs defence dialogue.

China’s navy is making friends in Dili

While relations with Timor-Leste remain strained over Australia’s 2004 bugging of its cabinet office, the young nation, on half an island just 720 kilometres from Darwin, has asked China to help train its navy.

The request was made by Timor-Leste’s defence and security minister, Filomeno Paixao, at talks this month with Rear Admiral Yu Wenbing of the People’s Liberation Army Navy. The talks took place during the visit to Dili of a Chinese warship and are an unsettling reminder to Canberra of Beijing’s growing military influence very close to home.

The request for China to train Timorese naval officers was confirmed by a local defence source.

The officers and crew of the 5,548-tonne Qi Jiguang, a Type 679 training ship, received a gala welcome as the vessel was escorted into Dili Harbour by the Timorese patrol boat Kay Rala Xanana. The Shanghai-class patrol boat is one of two purchased from China by Timor-Leste in 2008 to protect its ocean fishery.

The warship visit came at a sensitive time. In August, Scott Morrison made the first visit to Timor-Leste by an Australian prime minister in 12 years as part of celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the nation’s vote for independence from Indonesia. The Shanghai-class boats were on show and moored directly in front of the presidential palace during the commemorations.

Morrison announced that Australia would provide a package of maritime support measures for an upgrade of the country’s small naval port at Hera, east of Dili. Hera will be the home port for two new Guardian-class patrol boats gifted to Timor-Leste under Canberra’s Pacific Maritime Security Program, with delivery expected in 2023.

Timor-Leste is one of 13 countries to receive the patrol boats, to be built at the Austal yard in Western Australia. The program is part of a $300-million maritime security initiative to leverage ‘soft power’ in the Asia–Pacific region as it is increasingly targeted by Chinese influence and investment.

The prime minister’s visit to Dili was intended to signal a new chapter in Australia’s relations with Timor-Leste, which had been weakened by the bugging scandal and the tortuous efforts to finalise a new maritime boundary between the two countries. Both the bugging and the handling of the boundary negotiations triggered concerns about Australia’s reliability as a close partner.

Dili regards strengthening bilateral cooperation and economic and defence ties with Beijing as a useful hedge against what some in the government consider undue influence and pressure from the West, including from Australia.

The news for Australia wasn’t all bad. Brigadier General Falur Rate Laek, deputy head of the Timor-Leste Defence Force (known by its Portuguese acronym F-FDTL), said the two Guardian-class patrol boats would be a welcome addition to the nation’s small navy and would improve security off its southern coast. He said tensions with Australia had not affected defence cooperation between the two countries, which remained ‘excellent’.

He said Timor-Leste’s plans to raise a dedicated special forces unit would draw inspiration from the fabled Australian Sparrow Force independent companies that waged a guerrilla war against Japanese troops occupying the territory during World War II.

‘We’re creating a special operations force. It will be an independent company’, said Falur on the sidelines of the celebrations commemorating the 1999 vote for independence.

A distinguished former senior Falintil guerrilla commander, Falur said the new Timorese unit would draw on the tactics used by Sparrow Force, which specialised in reconnaissance behind the lines, ambushes and hit-and-run attacks. Other former Falintil commanders have said that Sparrow Force’s operations provided a model during their decades-long guerrilla war against the Indonesian military following Jakarta’s brutal 1975 invasion. Falur comes from Ossu, a small town in eastern Viqueque, which once served as the Sparrow Force’s headquarters.

The F-FDTL has 2,129 personnel, including 200 women. It comprises two light infantry battalions, a naval arm, headquarters and support elements. Its UN-supervised birth in February 2001 was controversial and sowed the seeds of discord that would bring the country to the brink of civil war in 2006.

I attended an emotional ceremony in the mountain town of Aileu during which 650 former Falintil guerrillas, mostly loyal to former commander-in-chief Xanana Gusmao, were formally inducted into the ranks of the F-FDTL’s first battalion. Unfortunately, the ceremony also revealed the legacy of old historical differences and allegiances within Falintil. Another 1,300 veterans who expected to enlist were excluded.

Realising that Gusmao loyalists had formed the core of the new defence force, many of the rejected veterans would later seek enlistment in the country’s nascent police service, a force under the control of interior minister and Gusmao rival Rogerio Lobato, setting the scene for a possible future showdown.

In a briefing at the F-FDTL’s new Chinese-built headquarters in Dili, Falur stressed the importance of ongoing military cooperation with Australia and the former colonial power, Portugal, which are currently the country’s two biggest defence cooperation partners.

F-FDTL personnel recently participated in the massive Australian military exercise Talisman Sabre, and they were heavily engaged in training with the Portuguese military, he said. Several Portuguese officers work in the Dili headquarters.

A small number of defence personnel were receiving flight training in the Philippines ahead of a possible purchase of three medium-lift helicopters subject to parliamentary approval. They may be a Chinese-built variant of the Russian Mi-17 workhorse.

Falur also said he was keen for joint training of Timorese troops with the Australian Army’s Norforce unit, which specialises in long-range surveillance and reconnaissance and comprises a large number of Indigenous servicemen and servicewomen.

China’s PLAN—breaking out to blue waters

Image courtesy of Flickr user U.S. Pacific Fleet.

On 25 December 2016, the PLAN deployed its Liaoning carrier group beyond the First Island Chain for the first time, in what many considered to be a warning to Taipei after President Tsai Ing-wen’s phone call with US President-elect Donald Trump. The PLA’s activities in the Western Pacific continued after President Trump told President Xi that the US would honor the ‘One China’ policy.

On March 2, PLAAF fighters, bombers, and early warning aircraft transited the Miyako Strait and entered the western Pacific for joint exercises with the PLAN’s far-sea training taskforce including the destroyers Changsha and Haikou and supply ship Luomahu. A PLAN task force left Sanya on 10 February for a joint exercise with an aviation force in the South China Sea and the eastern Indian Ocean, and then returned by the south-eastern waters of Taiwan to the Western Pacific.

The PLAN’s naval drills are not only political exercises and a warning to the US, but also a basis for routine PLAN activities in the future. China’s maritime strategy is clearly moving beyond the traditional ‘island chain’ boundary that has limited the PLAN’s operations and development in the past

The island chain is originally an American strategic concept that was adopted by then PLAN commander Admiral Liu Huaqing who set ‘command of the sea out to the First Island Chain’ as the initial goal for modernizing the navy in the 1980s. But while Western media and analysis focus on Liaoning’s deployment through the First Island Chain, Chinese military media chose to de-emphasise the island chain concept. On  5 January 2017, the PLA Daily published an op-ed suggesting the island chain barrier was just a psychological threshold for PLAN itself.

The Chinese media’s reaction is highly significant in the signals it sends about China’s future naval intentions. It makes clear that the most significant barrier to China’s development of sea power is not the geopolitical environment or lack of capability but a psychological fixation over the island chains which has become an obstacle to PLAN’s formulation of a comprehensive maritime strategy. This intangible mental boundary needlessly prevented development of true sea power. Internal debate within the PLAN over the significance of the First Island Chain has recently intensified. In January 2013, political commissar of the Liaoning, Mei Wen, stated that ‘the so-called first island chain and second island chain should not be chains to bind up development of the Chinese Navy, but navigation marks for the Chinese Navy to sail into the vast oceans.’

This encouraged the PLA to shift its view of the island chain. On 7 February 2014, PLA Naval Military Studies Research Institute member, Zhang Junshe, wrote in the PLA Daily that the PLAN should change its strategic mindset and not be restricted by the existence of the island chains. This will alter the debate among Chinese thinkers and transform China’s focus from the limitations of the island chain to development of a blue water navy.

If China is breaking self-imposed barriers, expect expeditionary deployments to become a routine PLAN activity in the near future. That would also require greater operational support from other PLA arms. In this context, the PLA and PLAAF’s Far Sea joint exercise on 2 March suggests that China’s Eastern Theater Command aims to increase its ability to project power and gain air superiority beyond the mainland to support naval operations.

From Taiwan’s perspective, all of this increases risks. Sea-air joint operations, along with operations by the Rocket Force and Strategic Support Force against Taiwan’s C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) system, reinforce the perception of a deteriorating security outlook across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has confirmed that Chinese DF-16 precision ballistic missiles now target the island.

With a lot of focus on Chinese activities in the South China Sea, it’s important not to forget Taiwan’s security interests are at stake as well. Chinese naval activities, such as the Liaoning deployment, and regular probes by PLAAF airpower, are reinforcing the prospect of a more contested security outlook for Taiwan.