Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has confronted her Chinese counterpart after Chinese warships conducted apparent live-fire exercises at short notice on Friday, forcing commercial aircraft to change course.
In a post on X late on Friday night Australian eastern time, Wong said she met with China’s foreign affairs minister, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in South Africa that day.
“Calm and consistent dialogue with China enables us to progress our interests and advocate on issues that matter to Australians,” Wong said.
The live-fire drills have raised tensions between the countries, despite the conduct being in international waters and according to international law, due to the extremely short warning period given by the Chinese military.
The Australian deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, said on Saturday that Chinese authorities had not given “a satisfactory answer in relation to this”.
“When Australia, for example, does a live-firing event such as this – which countries are entitled do on the high seas and that’s where this task group is, they’re in international waters – we would typically give 12 to 24 hours’ notice, which enables aircraft that are going to potentially be in the vicinity to make plans to fly around,” Marles said.
“What happened yesterday was the notice that was provided was very short. It was obviously very disconcerting for the airlines involved in Trans-Tasman flights.”
Marles said while Wong raised the issue of the insufficient notice period directly with Wang Yi, the government had additionally raised it with China through Canberra and Beijing channels.
The New Zealand defence minister, Judith Collins, said the drills were the “most significant and sophisticated” seen in the region.
The Australian and New Zealand military had been monitoring the three People’s Liberation Army-Navy vessels – the Jiangkai-class frigate Hengyang, the Renhai-class cruiser Zunyi and the Fuchi-class replenishment vessel Weishanhu – off the Australian coast for at least a week.
The flotilla was about 340 nautical miles or 640km off Eden, on the New South Wales south coast, in international waters, when it notified of the drill.
A NZ navy vessel shadowing the flotilla observed the ships change formation and place a target in the water, manoeuvre again and then recover the target. No surface-to-air firing or live fire was observed but the change in formation was consistent with a live-fire drill.
Qantas, Emirates and Air New Zealand modified flight paths between Australia and New Zealand after receiving reports of live fire in international waters.
China advised of the drill by a verbal radio broadcast on civilian channels, a Defence spokesperson said in a statement.
“[China] did not inform Defence of its intent to conduct a live-fire activity and has not provided any further information,” the statement read.
“That formation has now reverted to normal, indicating that the live-fire activity has most likely ceased … no weapon firings were heard or seen; however, a floating surface firing target was deployed by [China] and subsequently recovered.”
The incident follows an Australian air force encounter with the Chinese military last week, when a Chinese fighter jet released flares in front of an RAAF surveillance aircraft during a patrol in international airspace over the South China Sea.
The flares had come within 30m of the RAAF plane.
Marles said the encounter last week was different to Thursday’s drills, with the former involving “unsafe and unprofessional conduct in our view in relation to Chinese fast jet in the presence of an Australian P8 aircraft”.
The RAAF had been acting in accordance with international law and registered concern with China about the fast-jet’s behaviour, Marles said.
The presence of the Chinese vessels around Australia was “not unprecedented but it is unusual”, Marles said, and he had asked the defence force to provide correspondingly high levels of monitoring.
The incidents were indicative of growing global instability, Marles said.
Article by:Source: Stephanie Convery
