China’s recent deployment of three warships to waters east of Australia was "designed to be provocative,” a top Australian intelligence official has said, as Beijing looks to normalize this type of military presence in the region — a move that also has implications for Japan.
“This is the furthest south a PLAN task group has operated, and at least some of its activities seem designed to be provocative,” Andrew Shearer, Australia’s director-general of national intelligence, said in reference to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy vessels.
Last week, the Chinese naval flotilla conducted an unusual series of live-fire exercises in the seas between Australia and New Zealand, forcing civilian flights to divert on short notice and prompting officials in the two countries to say that more advance warning should have been given.
Shearer, speaking to a parliamentary committee earlier this week, also said Canberra had surmised that the Chinese military’s moves were not limited to targeting just Australia, and were intended to “shape the responses of those in the region and observe and learn from our reactions.”
“The deployment demonstrates China's growing capability to project military power into our immediate region, now matched by an increasing intent to do so,” he added.
The Chinese military has been increasingly active near Japan — sometimes even entering territorial waters and airspace — in recent years. Last year, a Chinese military plane entered Japanese airspace for the first time, while one of the Asian powerhouse’s navy survey ships entered Japanese territorial waters just days later.
Appearances of Chinese warships, in particular, have surged, including dispatches through waters surrounding its Nansei Islands. Last year, Chinese naval vessels were spotted 68 times while sailing between the East China Sea and Pacific Ocean — a figure more than three times higher than that recorded in 2021, according to the Defense Ministry in Tokyo. The number has risen steadily in the past few years, from 21 in 2021 to 46 in 2022 and 53 in 2023.
Some experts say China is likely using the exercises to eyeball the two countries — both mutual allies of the United States — for any weaknesses in their responses.
“It would make sense for China's leadership to deploy the PLA in a coordinated fashion, to test and calibrate Japan and Australia's responses, and those of our common ally,” said Euan Graham, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
“Sadly, the lack of a firm response from Australia or any statement of support from Washington to this incident will only embolden China to keep on pressing, with the aim of normalizing its military presence and identifying exploitable wedges between the U.S. and its most important Pacific allies,” he added.
“It shows that Beijing's long-term ambitions to project force across the Western Pacific and to eventually supplant the United States as the dominant power in this region are undiminished,” Graham said.
China’s massive military buildup has unnerved both Japan and Australia, both mutual allies of the United States, with Tokyo undergoing dramatic shifts in its defense and security policies since 2022 as it sheds some of the postwar constraints on its military.
Last April, Australia also unveiled a new National Defense Strategy that expands its role in Indo-Pacific security and represented a recalibration of its defense posture in response to the Chinese military's growing assertiveness.
In his testimony, Shearer described China’s military build-up as “the largest and least transparent ... since the Second World War,” adding that it “will mean that the PLA will be able to operate at greater distances from mainland China, in greater numbers, including into Australia's immediate seas and skies.”
On Wednesday, New Zealand’s Defense Ministry, in conjunction with Australian authorities, said that the three Chinese warships were south of Tasmania, inside Australia’s exclusive economic zone, and moving west.
Australian Defence Force head Adm. David Johnston said Wednesday that China's navy did not give them any advance notice before starting the "disruptive" live-fire exercises last week, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported, confirming earlier reports that Canberra was only alerted to the drills by a Virgin Australia airline pilot.
Johnston said that Air Services Australia was first warned of the drills at around 10:10 a.m. on Friday, after commercial airlines picked up a radio broadcast from the Chinese naval task group — meaning Australian authorities only became aware of the exercises about 40 minutes after China's “window” for the start of the drills opened at 9:30 a.m.
In addition to the three warships, the Chinese flotilla was also believed to be accompanied by a submarine, the ABC also said, citing an unidentified military figure, though Johnson said it was unclear if a sub had joined the task force.
Countries that employ nuclear-powered submarines such as China, Britain and the U.S. often use them with such naval task forces on longer, more complex missions to stealthily gather intelligence and information on the responses of adversaries.
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