In February a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) task group – comprising the Type 055 cruiser Zunyi, Type 054A frigate Hengyang and Type 903 replenishment ship Weishanhu – sailed deep into the Tasman Sea, the body of water separating Australia and New Zealand. As the warships fired live rounds and caused commercial jetliners to divert, alarm rippled through the corridors of power in Australia and New Zealand.
As Australia concentrates on defending its northern maritime approaches, the PLAN poked Canberra in the eye by loitering in waters to the east and south of Australia. After departing China, the task group reached the Coral Sea on 13 February, before journeying south, and it would be surprising if a nuclear-powered submarine did not form part of the mini-flotilla for at least part of its journey.
Whilst on the high seas, the Chinese warships broadcast a warning on international radio frequencies on 21 February telling aircraft to stay away from an area 640km from Sydney since they were performing naval gunnery. A second live-fire exercise slightly closer to New Zealand occurred the following day. At time of writing in late February, the trio was operating approximately 300km east of Hobart, Tasmania within Australia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Wu Qian, a China National Ministry of Defense spokesman, said, “During the period, China organised live-fire training of naval guns toward the sea on the basis of repeatedly issuing prior safety notices,” and that its actions were “in full compliance with international law and international practices, with no impact on aviation flight safety”. China said live-fire drills included simulated responses to “a fast-approaching unidentified vessel,” plus threats “from the air”.
Were China’s actions illegal? Jennifer Parker, an Expert Associate at the National Security College, Australian National University, pointed out to Naval News that there is no legal obligation for foreign warships to notify coastal nations more than 300nm away about live-fire activities on the high seas. Parker could not stress strongly enough the normality of warships performing gunnery serials. “It is so incredibly common.” Nonetheless, China could be accused of poor practice for firing weapons too close to civilian air routes. On 21 February alone, 49 flights were diverted.
Australian Defence Force (ADF) said:
“We respect the right of all states under international law to exercise freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace, just as we expect others to respect our right to do the same.”
Were Beijing’s actions provocative then? Parker, a former Australian naval officer, noted, “What I’d say is that ships on long deployments, and this is a long deployment from China, do gunnery serials regularly, every couple of weeks for training and maintenance of skill sets. If they wanted to be really provocative about it, they would have done it closer to Australia. I think there’s also the question of you can choose to be provoked. And I think that really, there could have been a little bit more tempered response in terms of this being normal for ships to do live firings.”
Nonetheless, Parker agreed, “I think the nature of the deployment is certainly designed to send a message. There’s a reason they’re down here, there’s a reason they’re loitering down here and they’re not coming in for a port call. That’s about sending a message about their capability. But I think we need to be very careful about how incensed we become about simply exercising freedom of navigation, which is something that we do all the time.”
Australian and Kiwi warships sailed jointly through the Taiwan Strait last year, so it is plausible this is a way for the PLA to remind the antipodean nations that such actions go in both directions.
“It should be paid attention to,” Parker said, “but we need to be very careful in terms of the kind of attention we pay and the words that we use, because what we don’t want to do is generate propaganda for China to use against our country when we’re operating where we’ve always traditionally operated in the South China Sea and Northeast Asia.”
Professor David Capie, Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University in Wellington, concurred: “I don’t know if you describe it as provocative, but I think it’s clearly tended to send a message.”
Capie said Kiwis are not used to having such events close to their shores. “For New Zealanders, I think that sense of the sharper parts of strategic competition is something that’s really been far away. It’s been in the South China Sea, it’s been in the East China Sea. But this flotilla, together with recent developments in the Cook Islands and the intercontinental ballistic missile test last year, it has a sort of cumulative effect.”
The leisurely presence of this PLAN group certainly underscores Chinese intentions to range far and wide across the Pacific, and also to normalise such appearances. It represents part of Chairman Xi Jinping’s imposition of a “community of oceanic destiny”. The PLA has demonstrated it has the ability to project power over long distances, and to disrupt air and sea traffic if it so desires.
Capie adjudged that New Zealand will “definitely see more of this” kind of naval activity. Although a primary PLA focus is Taiwan, “Just by virtue of the scale of the navy they’ve built and their intentions to play a broader role in the Indo-Pacific, I just don’t think there’s any doubt that we’re going to see this more often.”
Parker also believes such forays will become more frequent. “I think we’ll potentially see multiple task groups, so one in the Pacific and potentially one in the Indian Ocean. I think it’s about testing Australia’s responses – both in our defence responses but also our national responses in terms of, how does the population react to it.”
Andrew Shearer, Australia’s Director-General of the Office of National Intelligence, told a Senate estimates hearing shortly thereafter, “We judge Beijing intends to normalise this sort of presence, shape the responses of those in the region, and observe and learn from our reactions.”
Australia and New Zealand deployed assets such as P-8A Poseidon aircraft, as well as Anzac-class frigates and the tanker HMNZS Aotearoa, which was on its way home from a voyage to the Antarctic. Capie described the partners’ response as “effective and very well coordinated,” despite Australia’s Chief of Defence Force David Johnston admitting that the ADF only learned the PLAN was conducting a live-firing exercise 40 minutes after it began, first alerted by aviation authorities.
Capie explained there has been messaging by Australasia too, demonstrating to China that they are allies and work very closely together. The Kiwi academic added, “My sense is that there’s been a real keenness on the part of probably both governments to signal the closeness of their security and defence relationship in this response.”
Capie suggested this event close to home waters, just one data point among many, should push Wellington to improve its defence capability, especially since it possesses an enormous EEZ and has only a tiny force of ships and aircraft to monitor it.
Parker further noted that New Zealand has allowed its “naval capability to atrophy”. She believes the way for it to ramp up is to align acquisitions and training pipelines with Australia. “I think that it would be the best to rapidly build capability, because once you get below a core threshold of capability, which New Zealand has gone below, it’s incredibly difficult yourself.” She urged: “New Zealand really needs to think hard about investment in defence and defence capability.”
Addressing the Chinese task group’s activities so far, Capie concluded, “What they’ve done is consistent with international law. That’s what lets us sail through the South China Sea and through the Taiwan Strait and stand up for freedom of navigation and international law. But let’s also not pretend that they’ve come south because they want to see the penguins!”
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