China pushes the military envelope with power projections

A nation’s military serves two purposes: protection of the homeland through deterrence and defense and the projection of power to shape decisions far beyond the nation’s borders. As China has pursued the relentless modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), that effort has largely focused on national defense.

Recently, however, China has been demonstrating its ability to project power. This week, Chinese ships conducted military exercises, including live-fire drills, in waters near Australia and New Zealand. While legal, the moves expose as hypocrisy Beijing’s regular assertions that it is concerned only with defense. China is acting like any other great-power wannabe: using its military to show smaller nations that it can reach out and touch them if it so wishes.

Last week, three People's Liberation Army Navy ships entered Australian waters and traveled down the country’s east coast. The vessels included a PLAN destroyer (one of the most modern in its inventory), a frigate and a replenishment vessel — a submarine was also thought to have accompanied them, but that could not be confirmed. At one point, the ships were about 150 nautical miles from Sydney, within the country’s exclusive economic zone, or EEZ.

While in international waters between Australia and New Zealand, the vessels spent two days conducting the live-fire drills. Australian officials protested the exercises while acknowledging that they occurred outside the country’s EEZ, and thus were legal. The governments of both Australia and New Zealand complained that they had been given no notice of the drills and commercial airlines were forced to divert flights as a result.

This is part of a pattern of indifference to and disregard for other nations’ safety. Last September, China conducted a missile test that landed near French Polynesia’s EEZ, about which “most Pacific Island nations got no warning at all,” while New Zealand got “little warning,” complained New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters. Peters, who was in Beijing during last week’s drills, rightly called it “a failure in our special relationship.”

Apparently, however, such behavior is now a standard feature of the PLA's operating handbook. In a Japan Times article this week, Gabriel Dominguez detailed a harrowing encounter with a PLA helicopter while traveling in a Philippine government plane on patrol in the disputed South China Sea. The helicopter came within meters of the aircraft, endangering the lives of the crew and passengers. Commodore Jay Tarriela, Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, called the incident “the most dangerous act by China.”

Last May, Canberra accused a Chinese aircraft of dropping flares near an Australian helicopter that was operating as part of a U.N. Security Council mission on the Yellow Sea. In August, there were several instances where Chinese warplanes dropped flares to keep Philippine government aircraft away from disputed territories Beijing claims as its own. In November, Canberra complained that the Chinese Navy had used sonar pulses against its vessels that were in international waters, which resulted in injuries to Australian divers that were in the water.

And days before this week’s incident with the Philippine aircraft, a Chinese fighter released flares in front of an Australian military plane that was flying over the South China Sea, a move that triggered a complaint from the Australian defense ministry about “unsafe and unprofessional interaction.”

This recklessness is dangerous and must be loudly and publicly condemned. In addition to the potential loss of life among the crew and passengers, an accident between China and a U.S. ally, which all these nations are, risks escalation. As the United States noted after the incident with the Philippines, the defense treaty “extends to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels or aircraft — including those of its coast guard — anywhere in the South China Sea.”

While China’s motivations remain opaque, we can guess at Beijing’s intent. The dispatch of a flotilla to Australian waters, thousands of kilometers from the Chinese homeland are, for some, a provocation. Beijing is testing the responses of governments to the presence of Chinese military capability on their approaches. This intelligence collection occurs at the tactical level — the actions taken by the Australian military –— as well as at the strategic level: how the Canberra government responds broadly to this potential danger.

Japan has been similarly tested by the regular presence of Chinese military assets around Japan and their increasingly frequent incursions into its territorial waters and airspace, as The Japan Times has often detailed. In 2024, Chinese naval vessels were spotted 68 times while sailing between the East China Sea and Pacific Ocean — more than three times the number in 2021, according to the Defense Ministry in Tokyo.

The flotilla is also a show of power. It is the first time Chinese vessels have conducted military exercises in the Tasman Sea. More such operations can be expected as China builds closer ties with countries in the South Pacific.

It is also the farthest south a naval task group has operated. In 1985, two PLAN vessels traveled to the Southern Ocean to transport scientists to China’s first Antarctic base. During that trip, one of the ships broke down. This voyage has instead shown the world that China has a self-sufficient blue water logistics support chain.

China has for years insisted that its military is only for defensive purposes. That argument has slowly been exposed for the falsehood that it is. First, there was the development and deployment of aircraft carriers, which are purely instruments of power projection. While China has every right to possess that capability, Beijing denied that it was even building carriers when it began that process. Now it has three.

China has established a military base in the African nation of Djibouti, despite its constant condemnations of the U.S. and other countries that have done the same. Opened in 2017, the base has served to protect Chinese assets in the area and provide public goods like antipiracy patrols, humanitarian relief and peacekeeping operations. It is unmistakably a vehicle to project power in the region as well.

Closer to home, there are regular threats to and intimidation of countries with which Beijing has disputes. The Philippines is the primary focus, but Japan, Vietnam, South Korea and Indonesia have felt China’s anger. Taiwan is a constant target. While China has the right to defend its interests, the issue is how it chooses to do so. Beijing appears to prefer resorting to force and unilateral action, turning its back on dispute resolution mechanisms such as international tribunals that rely on impartial application of the rule of law.

While Australian, New Zealand and Chinese officials concede — or insist in the latter case — that Beijing’s actions have been consistent with international law, they are nevertheless reckless and dangerous. That suggests that as a preliminary step, concerned governments should develop protocols such as a code of conduct or “rules of the road” to minimize dangers.

Historically, China, for its part, has been reluctant to do so, arguing that its antagonists have no right to even be present in these situations and such agreements legitimize those actions. Now that China finds itself on the other side of the equation, operating far from its shores, it might be ready to acknowledge the logic and value of such an accord.