Australia does some strange things in its foreign policies. The latest "security" (read "military") tieup with Japan is no exception.
Canberra insists that the tieup has no anti-China implication. But a tieup with a Tokyo beset by anti-Beijing dislikes and fears, and which seeks to recruit even such unlikely candidates as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and India into a chain of potential anti-China alliances, cannot be otherwise.
Besides, if China is not the target then which country is? North Korea? That bogey is now fast disappearing as Washington comes to realize that the key problem all along was its refusal to live up to its 1994 promise of normalized relations with Pyongyang.