SEOUL, South Korea – Australians this weekend were left mulling their naval defenses — and their government’s confused response — after reports that Chinese warships were conducting live-fire exercises off the U.S. ally’s eastern seaboard.
While China’s Defense Ministry on Sunday denied it had not given Australia advance notice and accused Canberra of making “unreasonable accusations,” Beijing’s sortie over the Tasman Sea represents “an entirely new security environment,” one security analyst warned.
Australia has long been buttressed by its geographical distance from the Asian mainland superpower, and long accustomed to naval confrontations in waters far closer to China’s coasts than to its own.
The unease sparked by the incident mirrors greater regional uncertainty, as the security stance of the new Trump administration emerges.
Last week, a flotilla — cruiser, destroyer and supply ship — of the Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy was reported off Australia’s eastern seaboard, and on Friday, three commercial flights traveling between Australia and New Zealand diverted from their paths due to reported Chinese live-fire drills.
It later emerged that the PLAN warships had previously announced its plans to conduct drills – but that at least some parts of the Australian government were unaware that the notice had been issued.
Critics said the incident did not reflect well on the Australian government’s preparedness: Even late Sunday, neither the Defense Department nor the defense minister’s websites carried any information regarding the incident.
“We weren’t notified by China, we became aware of the issue during the course of the day,” Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said in a Radio Perth interview. “What China did was put out a notification that it was intending to engage in live fire, and by that I mean a broadcast that was picked up by airlines, literally commercial planes.”
Mr. Marles admitted that the Chinese naval vessels, operating nearly 400 miles from Australia, were not breaching international law.
He said Australian forces, “would typically give 12-24 hours’ advance notice … which enables aircraft which are potentially going to be in the vicinity to make plans to fly around.”
Though he called Chinese procedures “very disconcerting,” he seemed uninformed on details of their activities, “It is not clear if any live firing actually took place,” he told the radio station.
But later Friday, the Australian Defense Department announced, “No weapon firings were heard or seen. However, a floating surface firing target was deployed by the PLA-N and subsequently recovered.”
On Saturday, the Chinese flotilla, still in international waters, again pre-announced and conducted actual gunfire drills. The shoot was observed from a frigate shadowing the Chinese ships, New Zealand’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the G20 Forum in South Africa. She wrote on X: “I raised Australia’s expectations around safe and professional military conduct. … I also sought an explanation for Chinese naval vessels conducting live-fire drills without advance notification.”
Those comments elicited the angry retort from Beijing: Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian claimed claimed that China had “repeatedly issued safety notices in advance.” He continued, “Australia, fully aware of this, made unreasonable accusations … and deliberately exaggerated the situation.”
Australia’s opposition sharply criticized the incident and the government’s response. Shadow Defense Minister Andrew Hastie said China was “using gunboat diplomacy to test U.S. allies like Australia” and called Canberra’s response “weak.”
The situation exposed “Australia’s inadequate capacity to shadow China’s surface action groups and conduct blue-water operations concurrently,” wrote Euan Graham, an expert on regional strategy with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, on X. “We need a bigger navy quickly.”
“Welcome to an entirely new Pacific security environment, Australia,” retired Australian General Mick Ryan wrote on X.
In a Sydney Morning Herald editorial, Mr. Ryan called the incident, “the most brazen deployment of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy into waters adjacent to Australia.”
But he conceded, “The most obvious reason for the Chinese deployment and the live-fire event is to point out that if Australia conducts freedom of navigation exercises off the Chinese coast, China can, and will reciprocate.”
Australia’s defense posture has always been forward, and the 2021 AUKUS agreement between with Britain and the United States will in time provide Australia’s military with five nuclear-powered submarines. The first subs, however, are not scheduled to enter service before the “early 2030s,” according to the Australian Submarine Agency.
It is unclear if they will deter China’s navy, which is ranging increasingly far afield. Prior to the Tasman Sea incidents, most confrontations took place closer to China’s coast than to Australia. The number of direct confrontations is also rising.
Last week, Canberra accused Beijing’s forces of “unsafe” practices after a Chinese fighter dropped flares near an Australian aircraft over the South China Sea. And last year, a similar situation occurred when a Chinese fighter intercepted an Australian helicopter. In 2023, a Chinese destroyer was accused of using sonar pulses to attack Australian navy divers.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.