Tag Archive for: China

Sri Lanka holds its own amid economic uncertainty

In recent months, Colombo has faced two sharp blows from its Western partners. First was the surprise cut to USAID funding, amounting to approximately US$53 million. Then came a 44 percent tariff on apparel exports to the United States—Sri Lanka’s largest export market. Both moves came without warning and show the US not separating friends from foes, damaging the bilateral relationship and the US’s reputation.

Sri Lanka is discovering that even its most trusted partners can act unpredictably when domestic politics take precedence. Its experience with opaque Chinese loans was one kind of risk, but the recent moves by its democratic partners are another.

As Sri Lanka absorbs the shock of steep new tariffs, the US has carved out exemptions for certain Chinese electronics, highlighting how trade decisions are often shaped more by domestic cost concerns than by supporting partners. This sends a troubling message. The US urges countries, including Sri Lanka, to reduce their dependence on China but then withdraws its support and imposes trade barriers. If Washington wants alignment in the Indo-Pacific, it must act like a consistent partner, not an erratic one.

To its credit, Sri Lanka is not passively absorbing the fallout. Since the 2022 economic crisis, the government has moved to diversify partnerships and reset foreign policy. The current administration, elected in late 2024, has taken a more pragmatic and reform-oriented approach to diplomacy. For example, Sri Lanka and Thailand recently signed a free trade agreement. Colombo has also signalled its intent to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and has deepened ties with India, Japan and the Middle East.

These moves follow a broader recalibration that began after years of dependency on China for post-war infrastructure financing, a relationship that eventually triggered a debt crisis. Colombo has since completed important debt restructuring, restored modest growth and brought inflation under control.

Crucially, it is doing this while maintaining a non-aligned posture. Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has reiterated that Sri Lanka is ‘not pro-Indian or pro-Chinese’ but firmly focused on protecting its own interests. That philosophy has translated into action. Colombo has paused military visits from Chinese research vessels to ease Indian concerns while still welcoming Beijing’s investment in more commercially viable, equity-based projects. The government is now prioritising transparency and risk mitigation over opaque mega-deals.

India, meanwhile, is expanding its presence with its own strategic interests in mind. For example, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Colombo in April brought renewed momentum to the long-stalled Trincomalee energy hub.

India is also backing a 120-megawatt solar power plant in Sampur, on a site once offered to a Chinese-backed coal venture that was later shelved due to environmental and strategic pushback. This clearly shows a shift in the energy landscape that Australia should consider, given its pursuit of solar power almost entirely relies on China.

Sri Lanka-India defence ties are deepening too, through joint patrols, training and Sri Lanka’s participation in the Colombo Security Conclave.

These developments don’t mean Sri Lanka is decoupling from Beijing. China remains a key creditor and infrastructure partner, though its role is evolving. Due to its experiences with the Belt and Road Initiative and Hambantota port, Colombo realises it cannot depend only on China. And Beijing is now favouring smaller, commercially viable projects and equity-based investments over the debt-heavy megaprojects of the past, in part because of public and private criticism.

Crucially, India is a close neighbour and a bridge to other Indo-Pacific powers. The US remains relevant, but its recent unpredictability—cutting aid, raising tariffs and exempting China—is eroding trust.

What’s different this time is that Sri Lanka isn’t just reacting. It’s acting. The government is rolling out institutional reforms, including anti-corruption efforts in the customs department and pledges to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act. These steps are essential not just for domestic credibility but for reassuring partners that Sri Lanka is a stable, safe and reliable state. Progress is mixed, but Colombo’s intent is clearer than it has been in years.

Still, structural vulnerabilities remain. The global economy is heading into rougher waters. US President Donald Trump’s sweeping ‘reciprocal tariff’ policy could further squeeze Sri Lanka’s exports. Colombo is especially exposed as it has no free trade agreement or privileged access under the generalised system of preferences. Tourism is recovering, but any trade slowdown in the West could hit remittances and export earnings hard.

That makes diplomatic agility more important than ever. Sri Lanka must continue building economic resilience through diversification, value-added exports and deeper South-South cooperation. It should also court middle and regional powers—including Japan, South Korea and Gulf states—who offer investment without great-power entanglements.

For Washington, the message should be equally clear: if nations such as Sri Lanka are being pushed towards China, your policy settings probably aren’t right. Development aid, trade access and political consistency are not just tools of influence; they are measures of partnership. If the US wants to remain a credible actor in the region, it must demonstrate reliability and respect for countries navigating complex geopolitical terrain. For Colombo, due diligence is vital, regardless of the partner. That means holding all partners to the same standard.

Beijing finally slices off Sandy Cay

The Financial Times reported last week that China’s coast guard has declared China’s sovereignty over Sandy Cay, posting pictures of personnel holding a Chinese flag on a strip of sand. The landing apparently took place in mid-April.

If history is a guide, then Beijing is likely to get away with this latest fine-slicing annexation, a tactic well suited to the geography and geopolitics of the South China Sea. However, a prompt counter-assertion of sovereignty by armed forces and law enforcement personnel from the Philippines suggests that Manila will not yield sovereignty to China without resistance.

Seasoned South China Sea watchers will recognise the name Sandy Cay, a modest uninhabited sliver of land in the Spratly Islands, located a few nautical miles away from China’s largescale facilities at Subi Reef and the Philippines’ installation at Thitu Island.

This particular morsel of the South China Sea salami has been a long time in the carving. I wrote about it first in 2015 and again in 2017. For almost a decade, the Philippines and China have engaged in a low-intensity but persistent tussle over Sandy Cay.

While Sandy Cay has negligible physical value as territory, China’s lawfare experts were clearly paying attention, realising that whoever possessed the feature could potentially lay jurisdictional claim to Subi Reef, a naturally submerged feature at high tide, over which China has built a large-scale base on reclaimed land, including an airstrip and port. This apparent legalistic interest in Sandy Cay is ironic, considering that Beijing has run roughshod over international law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in so many respects.

The annexation was almost certainly long planned. Again, it comes as no surprise to seasoned South China Sea watchers to see China act at a time of international distraction. The long sweep of China’s territorial expansion in the South China Sea is replete with such moments when Beijing was able to take advantage of the international situation to press its claims, at the expense of rival Southeast Asian claimants.

Apart from heightened tensions with the Philippines, Beijing is unlikely to face punishment for its latest, bloodless annexation. Relations with Manila are already at a low point, given the breadth and severity of China’s maritime coercion and interference in the Philippines. Meanwhile, China is strengthening its relations with the rest of Southeast Asia.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is unlikely to make much of a fuss, despite the occupation of new features running contrary to the 2002 Declaration on a Code of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and ongoing code of conduct negotiations. Beijing likely judges that ASEAN members will turn a blind eye, provided China does nothing further to develop Sandy Cay. Despite the Trump administration’s professed focus on competition with China and expressions of alliance solidarity with the Philippines—such as exercises between US marines and the Philippines armed forces in northern Luzon—the United States appears similarly unlikely to take a stand over the status of such a small, unoccupied feature. The inter-agency Philippines operation to reassert sovereignty at Sandy Cay and two other small features, conducted on 27 April, does not appear to have been directly supported by the US military.

One of Beijing’s diplomatic aims will be precisely to highlight, to the Philippines and others, the US’s alleged failure to act in support of its ally. But the failure to push back and impose costs against China’s successful revision of the status quo in the South China Sea is not just a US policy issue; it is a collective and cumulative failure of much of the international community interested in upholding international law, sovereign equality among states and access to the maritime commons. Australia, for one, should promptly make clear that China’s actions are provocative and destabilising, and its sovereignty claims to Sandy Cay are baseless.

Whether China encroaches in slow motion or acts in high gear to further its territorial claims in the South China Sea, the key point is that it only rolls forward—never back. Isolated shows of force, such as Scarborough Shoal in 2015, may temporarily hold its ambitions in check. But Beijing has learned that it can afford to pick its preferred time and place in the South China Sea.

Would a large-scale US show of force in response to China’s initial reclamation activities in the Spratly Islands have made a difference in 2013? The answer to that may well be affirmative, but that is water long under the bridge. In 2025, it seems most unlikely that the international response to China’s coast guard landing on Sandy Cay and proclaiming sovereignty will be significantly different to China’s actions in Scarborough Shoal in 2012, or the more serious clashes at Johnstone Reef in 1988 and the Paracels in 1974.

What sets this incident apart is the prompt counter-assertion of sovereignty by the Philippines, underlining Manila’s resolve to resist further Chinese encroachment and demonstrating its strengthened maritime policy coordination under the Marcos administration. Such resolve deserves tangible support from Manila’s allies and partners.

But the Philippines and other Southeast Asian claimants face a problem: the sparsely populated scraps of coral and sand that make up most of the contested features in the South China Sea are ideally suited to a salami-slicing strategy. Beijing has repeatedly shown that steady encroachment can successfully transform the status quo over time, without precipitating an armed response or incurring significant punishment.

China pursues a similar array of pressure tactics against Taiwan, which also has remote territory in the South China Sea at Pratas Reef and Itu Aba. Yet the annexation of Taiwan remains on a vastly different order of scale. However appetised China’s leaders may be by the thinly cut hors d’oeuvres on offer in the South China Sea, consuming the sausage whole is likely to induce indigestion, or worse.

Taiwan: the sponge that soaks up Chinese power

Taiwan has an inadvertent, rarely acknowledged role in global affairs: it’s a kind of sponge, soaking up much of China’s political, military and diplomatic efforts. Taiwan absorbs Chinese power of persuasion and coercion that won’t be directed elsewhere while the island remains free.

This means that supporting Taiwan is not merely a moral stance in favour of democracy; it is a strategic and economic necessity. Taiwan’s independence from China anchors the regional order—and maybe even the global order. While it remains separate from China, Beijing is delayed in shifting attention to new, potentially more dangerous fronts.

Every leader of the People’s Republic of China—from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping—has made ‘reunification’ a non-negotiable part of the party’s mission. Xi has tied Taiwan’s future directly to what he calls the ‘Chinese Dream’ of national rejuvenation. Unification is ‘essential’ to achieving China’s rise as a great power, he says. Party officials have referred to Xi Jinping as the ‘helmsman’ guiding China’s national rejuvenation.

The intensity of this focus is obvious. The Chinese armed forces have made preparing for an invasion and occupation of Taiwan their top strategic priority, developing a vast arsenal of missiles, air and naval forces designed to overwhelm the island’s defences and deter US intervention.

Military exercises simulating blockades or invasion have become normalised. In 2022, just over 1,700 Chinese military aircraft flew into Taiwan’s de facto air defence identification zone, twice as many as in the previous year. In 2024, that figure was more than 3,000. As the graphs below show, in 2024 Chinese aircraft and seafaring vessels were spotted around Taiwan on all but five days of the year. The exceptions were caused mostly by typhoons in the area.

China’s military and paramilitary activities around Taiwan in 2024. Source: ASPI’s State of the Strait Database.

And alongside this military pressure, Beijing wages an unrelenting pressure campaign to isolate Taiwan internationally, intimidate nations that support it and subvert Taiwanese society. This sustained, multi-domain strategy of intensifying coercion reflects just how much of China’s political and strategic bandwidth Taiwan consumes.

China devotes enormous resources to keeping Taiwan under pressure. The Taiwan issue so dominates Beijing’s strategic agenda that it slows, redirects, and tempers other assertive behaviours: it has fewer resources for other domains, including in the South China Sea, along the Indian border, in Africa and in the Pacific islands.

If unification remains the regime’s priority, Beijing must be cautious not to unnecessarily provoke crises elsewhere that could derail its Taiwan plans. Military adventurism in the East China Sea or South China Sea carries the risk of triggering a conflict and diverting resources that might undermine China’s ability to seize Taiwan. So, Taiwan’s function as a sponge for China’s attention is also a check on broader aggression. Beijing would be more emboldened to pursue its other strategic priorities if Taiwan capitulated.

There’s also a domestic angle. The Chinese Communist Party uses Taiwan to fuel nationalist sentiment, to justify defence spending instead of fixing an economy weighed down by structural issues, and to distract from other internal challenges. If the Taiwan issue were solved, the regime would need a new outlet for this energy—potentially one more dangerous for China’s neighbours.

Policymakers must ask a sobering question: what happens if Taiwan is annexed by China? This would not satisfy Beijing’s appetite but rather embolden it. Absorption of Hong Kong has only freed up more resources to focus on coercion of Taiwan.

With Taiwan under its control, China would gain a crucial forward base for power projection. Its navy would have more available resources to operate in the Pacific, threatening shipping lanes and enforcing the rights of internal waters within the Taiwan Strait. China could pressure Japan more aggressively over the Senkaku Islands or enforce dominance in the South China Sea. The Philippines, just south of Taiwan, would be more vulnerable to Chinese coercion.

Moreover, the psychological impact of a Chinese victory would ripple across Asia. US allies might question Washington’s resolve. Smaller countries might accommodate Chinese influence to avoid becoming the next target. The delicate balance of power in the Indo-Pacific would tilt—not towards peace, but towards authoritarian dominance.

Policymakers in Indo-Pacific capitals need to send a clear message: maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait helps preserve the broader stability of the Indo-Pacific. Conversely, abandoning Taiwan would not end China’s expansion; it would accelerate it.

Taiwan may be small in size, but it plays a disproportionate role in shaping Asia’s future. So long as it remains a sponge for CCP attention, the rest of the region has a chance to stay dry.

China targets Canada’s election—and may be targeting Australia’s

Following Canadian authorities’ discovery of a Chinese information operation targeting their country’s election, Australians, too, should beware such risks.

In fact, there are already signs that Beijing is interfering in campaigning for the Australian election to be held on 3 May.

In Canada, China evidently prefers the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney to the Conservative opposition. In Australia, we are seeing messaging against Opposition Leader Peter Dutton—suggesting that Beijing wants the Labor government of Anthony Albanese to be re-elected.

The Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Electoral Commission are cooperating to guard against China’s now well established habit of trying to shape foreign elections.

For Australian voters, especially those consuming media in languages other than English, the information environment is crowded and contested. Overtly, there are foreign official state channels (communications by foreign governments) and state-controlled outlets (those funded and editorially controlled by foreign states).

Covertly, there are attributed and non-attributed channels. Attributed channels operate under foreign state oversight without publicly disclosing affiliation. Non-attributed channels aren’t directly linked to foreign states, but are nonetheless aligned. The interwoven and reinforcing nature of these channels is part of the cause for concern, particularly as they operate outside regulatory or journalistic oversight.

Politicians usually refrain from commenting on foreign elections, though Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister this week raised eyebrows by saying he personally hoped Labor would win Australia’s. China’s interference is different to such one-off instances: it’s persistent, widespread and surreptitious.

Indicative sample of state-affiliated entities, it is not an exhaustive list. Source: 3rd EEAS Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Threats Report, March 2025.

In early April, Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Taskforce revealed that a  Chinese-language influence campaign backed by Beijing was targeting Chinese-speaking Canadians on the popular multi-function app WeChat. The messaging promoted Carney as a strong statesman, subtly framing him as a leader more capable of managing relations with the United States.

The taskforce found that the campaign originated from Youli-Youmian, a popular WeChat news account, which Canadian intelligence linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. The authorities had also picked up on the account in June 2023 and January 2025, when it targeted other members of parliament. This time the authorities found ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’—the use of a network of accounts to amplify a narrative disguised as organic public opinion. This activity peaked in March.

This tactic mirrors a developing pattern of Chinese electoral influence, where efforts are not always confrontational but rather cloaked in affinity and praise. Unlike the older image of disinformation campaigns as combative, these efforts are subtler. They don’t necessarily involve falsehoods and are not sought by the candidates themselves. This makes detection, let alone public consensus on countermeasures, more difficult.

In contrast, China-supported messages targeting Australia’s federal election have taken an overtly critical form. They often show up on state-aligned media, such as the Global Times, and on Chinese social media platforms, such as Rednote and WeChat.

For example, in response to Dutton’s concern a Chinese research vessel might be mapping Australia’s undersea cables, the Global Times accused Dutton of ‘beating the drums of war’ and using China as a political wedge in the election campaign. The editorial, which was also reposted in China Military news, took aim at what it framed as ‘paranoia’ and ‘double standards,’ pointing out that Australia’s own naval activities in contested waters, such as the Taiwan Strait, were not similarly scrutinised. Australian media outlets picked up this Global Times article and reported it widely, feeding directly into Australia’s public election discourse.

Screenshot showing Global Times article republished by China Military.

Screencap of 7 News coverage of Chinese state media articles.

Popular Chinese-language WeChat accounts have also amplified such narratives. One outlet, Australian Financial News (AFN) Daily, is a self-described financial media platform.  It recently published a series of highly circulated articles, collectively read more than 100,000 times, portraying Dutton as ‘a reckless, Trump-aligned figure unfit for leadership’.

Headlines included ‘Chinese people absolutely loathe him! If Dutton takes power, Australia will be in chaos!’ ‘华人极度讨厌！达顿上台后，澳洲大变!’ and ‘Completely doomed! Dutton’s rise will crash Australia’s housing market!’ ‘彻底完蛋！达顿上台，澳洲房价必将暴跌!’ Despite AFN’s nominal tie with Australia, its official account IP address traces back to an organisation called Changsha Aoxuan Culture Communication. The IP territory is registered to Hunan, China.

Example of headlines targeting Peter Dutton.

Official account information for AFNdaily in Chinese (left) and English translation (right).

China’s approach differs with local conditions. In Canada, efforts involve community-level micro-targeting through Chinese-language media platforms. In Australia, efforts have been at a macro level, with state media weighing in on elite political debates. But in both cases, the aim is the same: to seed confusion and divide public sentiment, ultimately reshaping policy trajectories in Beijing’s favour.

In the lead-up to the federal election, the presence of such narratives in Australia’s information environment may distort the truth at a sensitive democratic moment. Democratic resilience depends on transparency of the media and information environment. It’s increasingly requiring us to engage with new forms of information manipulation.

Ultimately, Chinese electoral influence reflects Beijing’s ambitions and tests the strength and self-awareness of democracies. By treating this challenge as either overblown paranoia or merely a problem for intelligence agencies, we risk missing the point. Our democracy and sovereignty require our elections to be based on Australian perceptions of what our politicians are telling us—whether truth, untruth or half-truth—not on what foreign adversaries such as China are secretly feeding us.

Bookshelf: How China sees things

Here’s a book that looks not in at China but out from China.

David Daokui Li’s China’s World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict is a refreshing offering in that Li is very much a part of the Chinese system, despite his studies and appointments at US universities. He is a professor of economics at Tsinghua University and has been a member of the monetary policy committee of China’s central bank. And while he defends Chinese economic and political authoritarian governance, he offers many insights and dispels some myths.

China’s World View provides a detailed explanation of the Chinese approach to governance. What is perhaps the most striking is the array of consultative processes in this authoritarian system. Li himself is often called upon to advise the Chinese Communist Party and government on economic policy. Li writes of the paternalistic relationship between government and citizens, and how the party is sensitive to public opinion and possible discontent. Even authoritarian governments depend on popular support.

Li emphasises that ‘history is the key to understanding today’s China’, and he writes that ‘Chinese people are accustomed to having a long-term view and perceiving history in cycles’. Elite views are particularly shaped by the century of humiliation—from the Opium War in the early 1840s to the end of the Japanese invasion in 1945—and the tumultuous period under Mao Zedong’s leadership.

Li argues that history helps understand the Chinese government’s extraordinary stimulus in response to the global financial crisis, representing 7.5 percent of GDP in 2009 and 2010. Premier Wen Jiabao ‘did not wish to be recorded in history to be a slow-acting decision maker facing a brewing crisis’. Many Chinese economists have since attacked Wen for driving Chinese debt to very high levels. But Li is convinced that Wen made the right decision at the time. It is also true that authoritarian regimes see crises as existential threats and that Wen may have acted out of fears for regime security.

China practices ‘respect-centred’ diplomacy through which it seeks respect and moral recognition, according to Li. Chinese foreign policies, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, are not solely in pursuit of economic and other interests. Such Belt and Road partners as Sri Lanka may not agree. Li writes that US President Donald Trump’s biggest mistake was his lack of respect for the Chinese government. (China’s World View was published in March 2024, before Trump’s return to the White House.)

Li’s discussion of respect-centred diplomacy makes no mention of China’s infamous wolf-warrior diplomacy, nor China’s sometimes vindictive reactions when it feels that it is disrespected. There is no reference to China’s economic sanctions on Australia, in response to the call for an independent, international enquiry into the origins of Covid-19. Indeed, there is no mention of Australia in the book.

So what is China’s world view?

According to Li, there would be four main aspects to the mainstream perspective of China’s world view.

First, China believes in mutual respect between countries for political and ideological diversity, meaning the West should not interfere in Chinese politics. There is no mention of Chinese interference in other countries using grey zone and other activities.

Second, economic collaboration should be the cornerstone of international cooperation, since politics can be divisive.

Third is historical conservatism, meaning that China does not seek to overturn history, such as Russia’s seizure of Chinese lands during the 19th century. But accepting history does not limit Chinese claims to Taiwan, the Senkaku Islands and the South China Sea.

Fourth, China does not seek to expand its territory (!).

Li is convinced that the rise of China is beneficial for the whole world as it has increased opportunities for others and expanded the provision of global public goods. Moreover, friendly competition between China and the United States is fostering innovation and progress in many fields.

China’s World View is an important book. Not many Western readers will be convinced by Li’s defence of the Chinese socio-political system, but he does offer important insights. Moreover, with China being an unavoidable reality in international politics and economics, the West must understand Chinese thinking, and Li’s book goes some way in helping such understanding.

Whatever the CCP says, regimes don’t have the rights of nations

All nation states have a right to defend themselves. But do regimes enjoy an equal right to self-defence? Is the security of a particular party-in-power a fundamental right of nations? The Chinese government is asking us to answer in the affirmative. Australians need to say no.

As a governing regime, the Chinese Communist Party claims many of the prerogatives of a nation state. This includes a monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force—Max Weber’s classic definition of a state.

As the world adjusts to the rise of China, its leaders want us to make way for the CCP’s triumphal arrival as the regime that made it all possible. This includes recognition of the party’s right to self-preservation on par with the rights of nations.

The United Nations Charter affirms the sovereign equality of member states, including their right to preserve their territorial integrity and political independence, free from force or coercion, and to resist external interference in their domestic jurisdictions.

Nothing in the UN Charter or associated documents, however, commits member nations to recognising the same rights for regimes. This places authoritarian regimes such as the CCP at a geopolitical disadvantage in seeking international recognition commensurate with their wealth, power and prestige.

Regime competition runs on a different track to international geopolitical competition, Yale scholar Nicholas Bequelin recently observed in Foreign Policy. The liberal rules-based order of the postwar period lends greater legitimacy to democratic states than to autocratic ones. This hampers the CCP’s search for recognition as a particularistic regime with security interests that serve not only the country but the party and its desire for self-preservation. The motives driving China’s adversarial relationship with the United States, Bequelin concludes, ‘are to be found in the imperatives of regime competition rather than in pure geopolitical calculations.’

The quest for regime security does not end with a geopolitical victory here or there. No authoritarian regime can rest easy until the world beyond itself is rendered safe for the pre-emptive defence of regime security. So current great-power competition is not just a matter of ideological competition within a stable geopolitical system; it involves reframing the system to treat regime security and national security with equal legitimacy.

CCP leaders are moving to reduce their relative disadvantage by altering the terms of international engagement. One of Beijing’s goals in its commitment to new international groupings is to insert commitments to the equal rights of regimes into public declarations. For example, the BRICS security agenda is taking shape around CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative (GSI), which equates regime security with national security. The 16th BRICS summit concluded on 24 October last year with the release of its Kazan Declaration a security document that had strong similarities the GSI, which was first spelled out by Xi at the 2022 Boao Forum.

Key phrases in the Kazan Declaration clearly align with the principles of the GSI. One of these is the acknowledgement of the equality of the ‘legitimate and reasonable security concerns’ of all countries. The phrase appears anodyne, but it is lifted directly from Xi’s GSI, where its significance is clear from context.

Beijing initially deployed this phrase to justify Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, based on the allegedly ‘legitimate and reasonable security concern’ that an independent Ukraine posed a security threat to Russia. China could offer similar justifications for its claims over Taiwan and adjacent Japanese territories or its contested maritime claims in the South China Sea.

That’s just the start. In current Chinese usage, the term ‘legitimate and reasonable security concerns’ refers not only to conventional security issues to do with territory and sovereignty, nor even to non-traditional security concerns around climate, energy, water, pandemics and the like. It also includes the CCP’s concerns around its own security, which it equates with the national and international security interests of China. What is to be preserved here is the power and standing of the party.

Concern for regime security has long featured in CCP foreign policy thinking, but the international implications of this concern have only fully emerged under Xi. This began with a heightened focus on regime security at home. Starting in 2014, Xi transformed Beijing’s approach to internal security by drafting a National Security Framework which, as analyst Sheena Chestnut Greitens points out, is China’s first-ever national security strategy.

The Xi administration also introduced tough new security laws, systematically purging and restructuring the national security system and working to perfect a massive ‘sentinel state’ apparatus capable of preserving the power and status of the party indefinitely. Now, Greitens argues, Xi is applying China’s domestic security framework to foreign policy with a view to reshaping the regional and global security order, ensuring the party’s domestic grip remains as secure abroad as it is on home soil.

It follows that ‘legitimate and reasonable security concerns’ refers, among other things, to the security interests of the CCP regime and the overlapping cluster of security initiatives that flow from party concerns. These initiatives include silencing dissent outside its borders through transnational repression and forcing national governments into line through economic coercion.

This security setting led the party’s official representatives to issue guidelines to Australia’s federal government—the Fourteen Grievances—about what can and cannot be said about the CCP in Australian media and by think tanks and government. Even after relations stabilised, party authorities tracked individuals and communities in Australia by activating surveillance systems initially designed to secure the party’s grip on China.

Recognising regime security as a right of nations would essentially legitimise economic coercion, transnational repression, censorship and covert interference of this kind.

As rights of authoritarian parties are unrecognised in international norms and institutions, elevating the security concerns of a Leninist political party to the level of nation states is no easy matter. But, as Xi reminds us, prevailing norms and institutions are up for grabs in times of ‘great changes unseen in a century.’ Democratic states need to preserve the equal sovereignty of nations, as distinct from regimes.

Reset Pax Americana: the West needs a grand accord

The world is trying to make sense of the Trump tariffs. Is there a grand design and strategy, or is it all instinct and improvisation? But much more important is the question of what will now happen, as new possibilities emerge from the shock effect of the tariff announcements and from subsequent moves and counter-moves.

For many, the United States is behaving erratically and imprudently, not least by lashing out at its allies and partners and by confusing financial markets. It’s risking its credibility by engaging in what appear to be irrational and self-harming actions that have already generated systemic financial shocks. Confidence in US leadership and economic rationality is being shaken.

To judge what might happen next, one must see the through-line—namely, Trump’s long-held grievance about what he sees as unfair global economic arrangements and widespread freeriding on the US, and his willingness to deploy all instruments of power to set this right. For Trump, the functioning of the global financial and trading system has seen the US incur the costs of entrenched trade deficits, hollowing out of the US industrial base and overvaluation of its currency, a consequence of the reserve status of the US dollar and US Treasury bonds.

At the same time, the cost of underpinning global security since 1945, through the so-called Pax Americana, has been borne disproportionately by the US taxpayer, who now carries US$36 trillion in federal debt. For the first time in its history, the US is spending more on debt interest than on defence. Meanwhile, allies and partners, with few exceptions, have minimised their defence spending wherever possible.

It is clear that Trump will no longer tolerate a situation where other countries gladly consume the security that the US produces, at significant cost to US taxpayers, without contributing materially to that security and while enjoying the prosperity it brings.

Bargains regarding prosperity and security are often intertwined. The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement was negotiated at a time when the postwar security order was being shaped. The deal ended in August 1971, when President Richard Nixon suspended the US dollar’s convertibility to gold and introduced a 10 percent import tax to compensate for ‘unfair exchange rates’—overvaluation of the US dollar. In September 1985 in what became known as the Plaza Accord, the US agreed with leading western economies that the US dollar would be devalued in a managed fashion to tackle a mounting US trade deficit. All the while, the US kept up its end of the bargain in protecting allies and partners.

We should not be surprised that from time to time, the US might deploy its enormous strategic and financial power to reset the terms of global prosperity and security. Whether by design or otherwise, we appear to be in another such moment.

Through the shock of the Trump tariffs, the US has created for itself an extraordinary opportunity to restructure the global trading and financial system, with two twin objectives in mind. These are to increase the relative gains from that system for Americans and to reallocate the costs of Pax Americana, so that they are borne more by allies and partners and less by US taxpayers.

To this end, the US should pursue a new global agreement, which might be called the Pax Americana Accord. It should bring all issues to the table in the process, so we are not dealing later with other, related shocks—say, with US currency or debt issues—or with doubts over US alliance commitments.

The best way to do this, in a way that would take maximum advantage of the opening that the tariff shock has created, would be for Trump to call an urgent meeting of what might be termed the ‘G7+’. This would not be a meeting whose objective would be to craft and issue a worthy but forgettable communique. Terms would be set out and agreed in outline, under the threat of total trade war. The details could then be hammered out over the remaining balance of the 90-day pause period.

The G7+ would consist of the US, Germany, Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Canada (as G7 members), along with India, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Indonesia (representing itself and the rest of Southeast Asia) and the European Union (in its own right and also representing the 24 non-G7 EU members). The G7+ would represent 67 percent of global GDP. Others, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, could sign on to the new accord at a later date, as might Taiwan.

The meeting would agree the broad outlines of a Pax Americana accord, which would ultimately address and, as necessary, resolve the following issues:

—US chronic trade deficits and US complaints about tariff and non-tariff barriers to its exports;

—China’s deliberate manufacturing overcapacity, which is creating global trade and financial imbalances, unacceptable supply chain dependencies and a dangerous capacity for rapid war production, all endangering the security and economic resilience of the US and its allies and partners;

—China’s re-exports to the US by way of countries such as Mexico, Vietnam and Indonesia, which would have to be blocked, lest China evade what will be crippling US tariffs and other trade barriers (if a US-China deal cannot be separately done);

—Technological de-risking in relation to Chinese goods and services, to prevent China from gaining security advantages by passing high-risk technology into foreign economies;

—The enduring role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, a global public good that the US provides;

—Long-term funding of the US Treasury, whereby US debt underpins global security (by paying for US military capabilities, another global public good) but where others who consume that security also enjoy income returns as debtholders and are not liable for the recapitalisation of those capabilities;

—US concerns about its industrial base, the strength of which also underpins global security and so represents another global public good;

—Defence spending of US allies and partners, most of which will need to build greater capacity to defend themselves without having to rely on US forces, at least in the early stages of a war;

—Potential for co-production of defence capability, in which allies and partners make larger contributions to US development programs; and

—Strategic reservation of critical minerals and other tangible assets by US allies and partners and the granting to the US of concessional access to these assets.

This is an ambitious agenda. A Pax Americana accord would address US trade grievances but more importantly would better spread the costs and risks of global security. It would reset the terms of Pax Americana such that it could be sustained. The US would be reassured about its strategic solvency, and allies and partners would take an active stake.

This would require negotiation of complex deals and arrangements. Achieving it would mean treading a narrow path. Careful and precise execution would be required, especially to reassure financial markets, which are always inclined to lose their minds during periods of uncertainty. If only we had a modern-day James Baker, the driving force behind the 1985 Plaza Accord. With the mandate of Reagan, who set the direction without managing the details, Baker deployed US power through velvety diplomacy in pursuit of US interests, knowing that US allies and partners would always prefer to deal with America, even when it was having a bad day. Has their attitude changed from Baker’s time? We are likely to find out over the next 90 days.

China will have to brought into any accord at some point. The underlying problems that have led us to this point are largely a consequence of Beijing’s strategy of concentrating industrial power in China. This has stunted development of a services-based economy in China, distorted global trade and supply chains, hollowed out Western industrial bases, delayed the industrialisation of the Global South and created national security and economic resilience risks for the US, its allies, partners and others.

Through a concerted strategy, as sketched out here, global trade could be rebalanced such that China would have to divest itself of overcapacity, including to the benefit of less developed countries.

By reallocating the costs of Pax Americana, the US would gain more financial and strategic resources to deal with the risk of China’s growing power and its strategic ambitions. It would be sustainably solvent, sitting at the centre of a reformed global system of prosperity and security. That would be worth the volatility of recent days. Whether we have arrived here through great cunning or as a consequence of instinct and improvisation does not matter much. What matters is the art of getting the deal done.

Seabed sensors and mapping: what China’s survey ship could be up to

Civilian exploration may be the official mission of a Chinese deep-sea research ship that sailed clockwise around Australia over the past week and is now loitering west of the continent. But maybe it’s also attending to naval duties.

These could have included laying or servicing seabed acoustic sensors and possibly detailed mapping of parts of the ocean floor to support future submarine operations.

Open-source tracking data enables such educated guesses to be made, without discounting the possibilities of economic and scientific data-gathering.

The ship, Tansuo Yi Hao (Exploration 1) took a similar route around Australia in January 2023, investigating 1100km of the Diamantina Trench over 34 days. China’s state media later said this was the first time the bottom of the trench had been reached. The ship carries a crewed submersible, the Fendouzhe (Striver), capable of long-duration forays to the seabed in depths exceeding 10,000 metres.

As in 2023, rather than proceeding directly home from New Zealand, where it was conducting joint activities with a partner institution, the ship has again undertaken a long deviation around Australia. Its transitory presence in the Bass Strait and inside Australia’s 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) was nonetheless permissible under international law, as long as the ship undertook no commercial survey activity and maintained continuous passage, showing ‘due regard’ to the coastal state.

However, speculation quickly grew that Tansuo Yi Hao could be gathering intelligence on Australia’s seabed cables. When questioned by media about its presence, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he ‘would prefer that it wasn’t there’.

Tansuo Yi Hao subsequently stayed mostly outside of the EEZ as it traversed the Great Australian Bight. Nor did it appear to loiter before reaching the Diamantina Trench, about 1100km off the Western Australian coast and well beyond Australia’s maritime jurisdiction.

Given the inherently dual-use nature of China’s marine scientific research assets, it would be prudent to assume that Tansuo Yi Hao and the submersible are subject to some level of military tasking. They belong to China’s Institute of Acoustics, which according to its own website has ties to the armed forces, dating back decades.

Sending a survey ship around Australia is less obviously coercive than similarly deploying a naval task group, as Beijing did in February and March, and China’s survey vessels are more common near Australia than generally known. But the passage is a further demonstration of China’s growing strategic reach and interest in operating beyond the first island chain.

According to automatic information system data from Starboard Maritime Intelligence, Tansuo Yi Hao has paused daily for 12 to 17 hours over the Diamantina Trench since 6 April. This is consistent with the reported underwater endurance of Fendouzhe of up to 15 hours. During that time, Fendouzhe could have deployed new devices or serviced acoustic arrays already on the seabed near the trench. The sensors could gather valuable military intelligence about signatures of ships that pass them.

The Diamantina Trench is too far away to be of obvious use for monitoring the approaches to HMAS Stirling, Australia’s sole submarine base and the main hub for future combined Australian, British and US submarine operations under AUKUS. It is also too deep for submarine operations. However, China reportedly has developed deep-sea surveillance networks that can operate in the extreme pressures of ocean trenches and use acoustic characteristics of the trenches to detect sounds from as far away as 1000km, including from passing ships and submarines. Listening devices are said to be attached to a seabed cable that is connected to a small buoy that in turn serves as a battery power source and relay for satellite communications. Around a decade ago, two arrays were reportedly laid in deep sea trenches near Guam and near Yap, an island in the Federated States of Micronesia. Since then, China’s sensing technology has continued to advance at an impressive pace.

The survey ship’s return visit to the Diamantina Trench after two years could be associated with a need to service or replace equipment and collect data gathered since 2023. Unfortunately, Australia has very limited capabilities for monitoring the seabed beyond its continental shelf, so it would likely be none the wiser if Tansuo Yi Hao deployed seabed devices during its current visit—or two years ago, for that matter.

To be sure, China’s deep-sea survey expeditions have economic and prestige motivations, which may even be preponderant. However, it would be foolhardy to discount the possibility that Tansuo Yi Hao and other specialised survey vessels are also used to support China’s naval ambitions.

China’s navy is probably interested in seabed mapping for its own future submarine operations, and while submersibles are able to map only limited areas, with emerging technologies they can do so in impressive detail.

In the public domain at least, it remains unclear whether Chinese submarines have previously operated south of Australia. But Tansuo Yi Hao’s two recent survey expeditions, taken together with China’s recent warship transit south about Australia, suggests Beijing’s strategic interest in Australia’s southern seaboard is rising. This is no surprise given the growing strategic importance of HMAS Stirling.

Australia must understand that China is paying it greater attention, in strategic terms, as a result of the AUKUS initiative and the developing footprint of the US force posture here. This is likely to motivate a more regular Chinese maritime presence in our vicinity, comprising not only military assets but dual-use capabilities such as survey ships. Assuming otherwise would be akin to burying our heads in the sand.

No, it’s not new. Russia and China have been best buddies for decades

Maybe people are only just beginning to notice the close alignment of Russia and China. It’s discussed as a sudden new phenomenon in world affairs, but in fact it’s not new at all.

The two countries have been each other’s most important diplomatic partner since no later than 2002, according to my research. Throughout this period, Russia has been central to China’s building of an alternative world order.

Based on the structured way the Chinese foreign ministry publishes incoming and outgoing diplomatic visits, I built a database that covers the presidential periods of Hu Jintao (2002–2012) and Xi Jinping (2012–present). My clearest finding was the dominance of Sino-Russian exchanges. The graph below shows the trend in Russia-China visits.

Russia-China visits (ministerial or higher) listed by the Chinese foreign ministry. Source: author.

This decades-old habit of intense interactions remained stable after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Beijing and Moscow’s similarly bleak view of the international order cannot be undone by a few trips of some eager European ministers to China or a few ill-thought-out US concessions to Russia.

The intimate nature of president-to-president ties is clear. Beyond the period covered by the database, there has been a state visit in one direction or the other every year since 1999. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin took office in 2000, a Russian president went on a state visit to China every even year, and every uneven year a Chinese president went to Russia. The exceptions are Xi’s extra visit to Moscow in 2015, officially called mere ‘attendance’, for the World War II victory parade. And there were no visits either way during the Covid-19 pandemic. Both Hu and Xi made their first foreign visit as president to Moscow.

There is no other country that has a diplomatic relationship with China like this. Russia is the top outgoing destination during Hu Jintao’s and Xi Jinping’s presidential terms. Russia was the top source of incoming visits for Hu’s two terms; it ranked second or third for Xi’s first two terms and, so far, for his third term, too. Few foreign officials have led delegations to China as often as Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

My data shows that Russia has been China’s most important diplomatic partner throughout the governments of Hu and Xi. Observers are right to point to the personal relationship Xi and Putin have developed—one that includes birthday phone calls. However, the empirical data shows that interaction was equally intense when Dmitry Medvedev was president of Russia and under the supposedly less assertively nationalist Hu.

Beyond diplomatic visits, Russia is fundamental to Beijing’s alternative world order. It has always been an important member of international groupings that Beijing began constructing from the 1990s onwards, including the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

China’s views on international order have developed a more global perspective over the years. Starting with the East Asia Summit and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation nearer to home, China now reaches the entire developing world through groupings such as BRICS+. Russia was always there—often to back up Beijing’s camp.

Now this expanding horizon is reaching Europe.

China’s long-term solution for what it still stubbornly calls ‘the Ukraine crisis’ overlaps with elements of Russia’s view of regional order. Within days of 24 February 2022, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi presented a ‘Five-Point Position’ that called for the formation of a ‘balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism’.

Wang linked the conflict’s ‘complex historical context’ to the ‘principle of indivisible security’. This Cold War-era idea evolved into a phrase first used by the Soviet Union and now by Russia to claim that NATO expansion infringes on its sovereignty. Chinese officials, too, have since 2022 repeatedly described US Indo-Pacific policy as a ‘NATO of the Asia-Pacific’ that risks triggering the same ‘disaster’ as NATO supposedly did in Europe.

At his press conference following the parliament meeting in Beijing, Wang said no third party could influence the friendly ties between China and Russia. The data backs him up. The relationship has been at the core of Chinese efforts to strike out in the world.

Despite massive historical differences between the Sino-Soviet split and today, the data shows that the practical situation on the ground is durable and sustainable. China’s diplomatic ties with Russia have not quantitatively increased or decreased significantly since February 2022. In contrast, my data shows that after 2014 diplomatic interactions between China and Ukraine declined.

Xi—who has called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky only once—told Putin during his most recent state visit in 2023 that Russia and China were driving ‘changes unseen in a hundred years’, which he links to his Chinese Dream.

In Xi and Putin’s world, there may be room for Donald Trump. But there is no place for the rules-based international order that many countries depend on. Western capitals and Washington pundits need to realise this is not a whim; Russia has consistently been China’s most important diplomatic partner.

Myanmar’s scam centres demand ASEAN-Australia collaboration

China’s crackdown on cyber-scam centres on the Thailand-Myanmar border may cause a shift away from Mandarin, towards English-speaking victims. Scammers also used the 28 March earthquake to scam international victims.

Australia, with its proven capabilities to disrupt cybercrime networks, should support the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ efforts to tackle this kind of transnational organised crime. Doing so would also help ease pressure on Australian policing and cyber capabilities, which deal with thousands of cybercrime reports each year.

Myanmar’s border regions, particularly around Myawaddy, are infamous for scam compounds. Victims—often lured by fake job ads on social media—are trafficked to these sites. Upon arrival, they’re forced to hand over their IDs and mobile phones, and are then forced to engage in love scams, crypto fraud, money laundering and illegal online gambling. The United Nations estimates around 120,000 people are trapped in Myanmar alone, with another 100,000 in Cambodia and unknown numbers in Laos, the Philippines and Thailand.

For years, Chinese authorities ignored this criminal enterprise. But when Chinese actor Wang Xing disappeared, a viral plea from his girlfriend on microblogging site Weibo triggered action. Within hours, Xing was released, sparking outcry on the social media from families of 1800 missing Chinese nationals believed to have been trafficked.

Xing’s rescue highlights the power of grassroots mobilisation but also exposes the systemic law enforcement failures on the border. While Nay Pyi Daw tolerates these scam centres, the operations persist due to selective enforcement from authorities in neighbouring China and Thailand, leaving the power networks behind them unscathed.

After public pressure, Chinese President Xi Jinping took action and met with Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra in February. Following the high-level meeting, Thailand immediately cut electricity, internet and gas supplies to five towns known for harbouring cyber-scam centres. However, these efforts remain largely performative as Myanmar junta-allied actors also position themselves as part of the crackdown, such as Saw Chit Thu‘s  Border Guard Force, despite its complicity in scam compounds. While more than 7000 people have been released, far more remain trapped. Syndicates continue to evolve, securing alternative electricity sources, switching to Starlink satellite connections, and potentially relocating their operations elsewhere.

China’s shifting approach towards Myanmar complicates matters. Its increased support for Myanmar’s military regime pushed the cyber-scam syndicates into areas controlled by the junta and its allied ethnic militias. Criminal activities accelerated and diverted their recruitment to English-speaking targets.

China’s response is also inherently reactionary and limited, doing little for victims in other countries such as Cambodia and Laos. While China’s diplomatic influence has led to some progress, victims from other countries, such as the Philippines and Indonesia, lack similar leverage to pressure host governments.

This calls for a more holistic and coordinated regional approach. It should focus on preventing modern slavery and combatting cyber and cyber-enabled crimes, and should include ASEAN as well as partners such as Australia.

ASEAN has a rudimentary structure to facilitate intra-regional intelligence sharing, joint investigations and coordinated rescue operations. ASEANAPOL and INTERPOL’s Singapore-based operations support coordination among regional police forces. While this has led to many arrests and seizures of assets, the overall effort falls short of dismantling criminal enterprises.

Last year’s launch of the ASEAN Computer Emergency Response Team was a positive move, strengthening the region’s ability to address cybersecurity incidents. But efforts to dismantle cyber-scam networks in Myanmar remain limited due to protection from junta-backed militias.

This situation should prompt greater Australian involvement. Australia’s offensive cyber capabilities helped disrupt cyber-crime networks, such as Lockbit and ZServers. In November, the Australian Federal Police, working with Philippine authorities, took down a major scam syndicate in Manila under Operation Firestorm, seizing digital evidence to trace Australian victims and disrupt global fraud operations.

With thousands of Australians falling victim to scam operations, Australia’s cybercrime-fighting efforts should prioritise taking down overseas scam networks. This could be done by strengthening skills and capabilities of cyber detectives and offensive cyber operators in the region, for instance through capacity-building workshops and mission-specific training. However, the government should also be prepared to use its political and economic heft to pressure host nations that allow such criminal activities, using tools such as ministerial interventions, attributions and cyber sanctions.

The Fifth ASEAN Digital Ministers’ meeting earlier this year stressed the need for international collaboration on implementing additional measures to prevent cross-border scams. While the roles of China, Japan, the United States and Russia were mentioned, Australia is not yet engaged. This is an opportunity for Australia to increase its collaboration with ASEAN, especially in the wake of the recent Myanmar earthquake, which scammers exploited through fake clickbait donations and malicious links.

Australia has committed to provide $2 million for Myanmar’s disaster response. Yet, targeted initiatives to address cyber scams would bolster defences against transnational cybercrime and create a safer global environment.

Tag Archive for: China

Creating an alternative to China’s dominance is hard. But this step will help

Australia’s future prosperity will not be built on nostalgia for past booms.

It’ll be forged in the critical supply chains of tomorrow. That’s why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s announcement of a $1.2 billion Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve, should Labor be re-elected, is an essential move.

The reserve is smart, pragmatic policy targeting both supply and demand aspects of Australia critical minerals sector. Executed properly, it will shore up Australia’s economic and geopolitical interests in the face of the global energy transition, geopolitical fragmentation, and economic coercion.

Although it’s an important step, if policymakers and industry leaders are serious about delivering sovereign capability, they must build durable partnerships and plan for market instability.

Building a resilient and competitive alternative to China’s critical minerals dominance is a global strategic challenge. It’s a task far bigger than Australia alone can solve.

It demands deep, sustained co-operation with like-minded partners, particularly Japan, the United States, South Korea, India and the European Union.

While calling the announcement visionary may be a stretch, it’s a crucial addition to Australia’s long-term strategy. It signals a serious move beyond simply mining and exporting raw materials, toward making Australia a reliable supplier of refined, high-value minerals.

The reserve’s structure mirrors recommendations made at ASPI’s Darwin Dialogue meetings in 2023 and 2024. It’ll operate through two key mechanisms: government-backed offtake agreements and selective stockpiling.

Offtake agreements are already a familiar tool in the mining sector.

The innovation here is that the Australian government will become the buyer, anchoring investment, setting stable price limits, and smoothing market volatility for producers and customers alike.

Stockpiling will complement this by building reserves of priority minerals to sell strategically into trusted domestic and international markets rather than simply holding resources in reserve.

Together, these mechanisms will stabilise supply, support market confidence and direct value chains away from politically coercive actors.

China’s dominance in the global critical minerals sector results from decades of deliberate policy.

Early action, subsidies, export controls and aggressive price manipulation have created structural dependencies that cannot be overcome through goodwill alone.

There have been few viable options but selling into Chinese-controlled markets.

Supply chains that depend overwhelmingly on a single actor, particularly one willing to weaponise economic relationships, are inherently insecure.

Labor’s proposed reserve accepts this reality and offers a practical response.

Australia cannot assume that action alone will be sufficient. The uncertain trajectory of US industrial policy only reinforces the need for Canberra to work harder with Japan, South Korea, India and the EU.

Building joint stockpiles, pursuing shared downstream investments and integrating offtake arrangements will be essential if Australia and its partners are to create a genuinely diversified and resilient supply chain.

Genuine engagement with Australian industry leaders who have fought to stay viable in a hostile global market will be equally important.

Companies such as Lynas Rare Earths, Iluka Resources and Arafura Rare Earths have hard-earned experience navigating the commercial, technological and political challenges of critical minerals supply.

Their operational knowledge, market intelligence and risk management lessons will be crucial in shaping a strategic reserve that is commercially realistic and strategically effective.

These companies know firsthand the difficulties of competing against state-backed Chinese giants that benefit from subsidies, price manipulation and market coercion.

Despite these distortions, they’ve built capabilities that are globally competitive.

Ignoring their experience would be a strategic mistake.

The proposed reserve fits neatly into the broader Future Made in Australia agenda. It complements the $7.1 billion in production tax credits designed to reduce production costs and strategic investments in Australia’s advanced battery and solar industries.

This layered approach to supply, demand and value-add is exactly what Australia needs.

In time, Australia must pursue co-investment strategies with trusted international partners, moving beyond simple export models to building integrated supply chains.

Strong partnerships with industry will also be essential to scaling up capability and de-risking future investments. As will investment into educating and training the necessary workforce.

The next government should continue to implement critical mineral policy not just as a national security imperative but one that would be seen by the US and other allies as in their interests too.

The critical minerals sector offers Australia a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

It is a chance to move beyond the traditional resource economy and lead in enabling the global energy transition and building high-value technology ecosystems.

The Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve is a smart foundation and a necessary one.

But Australia must act decisively, build strategically, work with trusted partners and listen to its battle-hardened industry leaders if it’s to fully realise this moment’s economic and strategic promise.

A tale of two fleets: gunboat diplomacy in an era of rising military power

When the US Navy’s Great White Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour in 1908, it was an unmistakeable signal of imperial might, a flexing of America’s newfound naval muscle. More than a century later, the Chinese navy has been executing its own form of gunboat diplomacy by circumnavigating Australia – but without a welcome. The similarities and differences between these episodes tell us a lot about the new age of empires in which Australia now finds itself.

Both were shows of force. The former expressed President Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy of speaking softly while carrying a big stick – the original version of peace through strength – while the latter aimed at disturbing the peace.

The Great White Fleet’s visit was a spectacle. Australians cheered as 16 gleaming battleships, painted white and with shiny trim, paraded into Sydney Harbour. A flight of steps, the Fleet Steps, was specially built in the Royal Botanic gardens to receive the American visitors.

The visit was a calculated diplomatic manoeuvre by Prime Minister Alfred Deakin in making the invitation and by US President Teddy Roosevelt in accepting it. Both Australia, a young federation deeply tied to the British Empire, and the United States, a rising but not yet super power, saw value in signalling US Pacific presence to Japan.

For Roosevelt, the fleet also presented his big-stick foreign policy to European nations: the US had arrived as a global power. Just as important, he saw the fleet’s world tour as helpful in explaining to the American people why they needed to spend money on defence, including ships, as their country opened up to global opportunities but also threats. Deterrence, preparation, social licence all strengthened national resilience.

Deakin saw the chance and didn’t just invite the fleet to Australia but engineered the visit. He wanted the visit to kindle the notion in Australia that it should have its own fleet. Irregular Royal Navy deployments to the Far East could not guarantee Australian security.

Also like Roosevelt, Deakin knew that a passive approach to defence policy would not keep the nation safe in an era of rising military powers, with a strategic shift to proactive engagement needed urgently, not only once a crisis had begun. He was especially concerned about Japan’s growing sea power but, again like Roosevelt, he also had an eye on Russian and (later) German sea power.

While Deakin wanted a national navy and was an empire man, he thought it prudent to start building a partnership with the US. Not yet replacing Britain as global leader, it had burst on to the strategic scene only a decade earlier. It had annexed the Philippines in 1898 in the Spanish-American War and, in the same year, the Hawaiian Islands. These made the US a Pacific power.

Both men in the early 1900s understood the connection between European and Pacific security and both set out to protect their national interests by working together against European and Asian powers seeking to create instability and spheres of influence.

As Russell Parkins well describes in Great White Fleet to Coral Sea, Deakin noted in one of his written invitations to the US that “No other Federation in the world possesses so many features of likeness to that of the United States as does the Commonwealth of Australia”. Roosevelt later acknowledged he had not originally planned for the fleet to visit Australia but that Deakin’s invitation had confirmed his “hearty admiration for, and fellow feeling with, Australia, and I believe that America should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious emergency”.

This was naval might wielded with soft edges: immense firepower floating on the harbour, and friendly chats over tea ashore.

Today the strategic environment again involves European and Asian powers – Russia and China – seeking spheres of influence, only the dynamics of the naval visit couldn’t be more different. No time for afternoon tea, just the reality that Australia faces a security threat from Beijing that demands national preparedness and international friendships and alliances.

When Australia and China encounter each other at sea, the interactions are adversarial, accompanied by dangerous Chinese manoeuvres, high-powered lasers shining into cockpits, chaff dropped into Australian aircraft engines and sonar injuring Australian navy divers. These are not friendly port calls but dangerous military activities and displays of coercive statecraft.

The Great White Fleet sought goodwill and alliances. China’s naval behaviour is an assertion of dominance. If the Australian public were in any doubt about how Beijing intended to interact with the region, China’s behaviour in this most recent episode should be instructive. The lack of warning given to Australia was a warning itself of what is to come. Beijing wants us to heed it and submit.

We must not submit. We must learn from the incident and change Beijing’s behaviour.

When a Chinese naval flotilla last made a port call to Sydney, in 2019, it was met with some public unease, if not alarm. Australia had, after all, approved the visit. But through a combination of Canberra’s ignorance of history and Beijing’s aim of rewriting it, the visit was approved without recognising that it coincided with the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Not long after the negotiated port visit, China suspended ministerial-level engagement as part of coercion to bring Australia into line. Despite some warming in relations in recent years, Beijing chose not to give Australia advance notice of live-fire exercises. The same Beijing that only a few years ago gave notice of a visit now has the confidence to fire at will.

Australia must stop being surprised by every new Chinese military or hybrid warfare development. Beijing’s confidence is growing in all domains, including cyberspace. With intrusions known as Volt Typhoon, China’s intelligence agencies were outed in 2023 as having pre-positioned malware for disrupting and destroying our critical infrastructure. This should also be seen as a rehearsal for later cyber moves.

And now, for the first time in the modern era, we have seen a potential adversary rehearse its wartime kinetic strategy against Australia. Yes, the Japanese did surveillance and intelligence gathering before World War II, but this circumnavigation with live-fire exercises takes us well beyond intelligence collection. Beijing has been undertaking “intelligence preparation of the battlespace” for some time with ships it frequently sends to Australian waters to observe our exercises or to conduct oceanographic studies (which improve submarine operations).

Just as the Great White Fleet helped to inspire the development of an Australian navy, the Chinese flotilla should warn us that our own fleet needs to be larger and ready to assure our security. The rhyme of history is that distant fleets operating in Australian waters matter and should spur our own thinking (and act as catalysts for action) regarding Australian sovereign capabilities.

After all, these episodes underscore an enduring truth about Australia’s geopolitical reality: we are a regional power situated between global hegemons and their very large navies. One could even say that we are girt by sea power. But this is not new territory; it is the blessing and burden of geography and history.

Whether it was navigating the transitions from British to American primacy in the Pacific or more recently adjusting to China’s challenge to the US-led order, Australia has always had to manage its strategic relationships with agility and nuance.

The key difference, of course, is that Australia welcomed the Great White Fleet in 1908 with open arms. Today, Australia finds itself on the receiving end of an unwelcome presence by ships that appear uninterested in friendly port visits. This demands a response that is not reckless but is firm enough to avoid being feckless.

Although the position is difficult, the Australian government should not think it must walk a tightrope in dealing with China. The strength of response to Beijing’s aggression should depend on the minimum needed to deter more aggression, not by a perceived maximum that will leave trade and diplomatic relations unharmed. European countries have made such mistakes in handling Russia – declining to hold it to account in the hope that Putin would keep selling gas to them and delay military action.

There’s no use in pretending or hoping there is nothing to see here except one-off instances of unpleasant behaviour. China’s aggression follows its concept of dealing with the rest of the world, and it won’t stop. Quiet diplomacy won’t deter Beijing from more dangerous behaviour but will embolden it to repeat its actions. Each instance will show Australia is incapable of doing anything about it until Beijing – mistakenly or intentionally – goes so far as to make conflict inevitable. Australia’s time to stand up cannot wait until a live fire drill becomes just live fire.

As Teddy Roosevelt put it, big-stick foreign policy involves “the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis”. Navigating the best response to aggression therefore requires clarity about what is at stake.

What Australia does in the South China Sea – where it operates in accordance with international law alongside allies – is not equivalent to China’s recent foray into the Tasman Sea. Beijing’s actions represent yet another demonstration of reckless behaviour, following its dangerous harassment of Australian forces. By making various attacks – with lasers, chaff or sonar – China shows an undeniable pattern of attempted intimidation. When Australia sails into international waters, we do so to maintain the rules-based order and promote regional stability, yet when China does the same it is often to undermine the rules and destabilise the region.

The intimidation is in fact regional; it’s not just about Australia. Just as the Great White Fleet demonstrated America’s arrival as a Pacific power, China’s naval activities signal Beijing’s intent to reshape the region’s strategic balance. Australia, as it has done before, must adapt. It must spend more on its own defence capabilities, deepen relationships with like-minded democracies and maintain the diplomatic dexterity that has long supported its survival in a world of rising and falling empires.

Most importantly, the government must bring the Australian public along for the voyage. The threat from China should surprise Australians no more than the threat from Putin should surprise Europeans.

Knowledge is power and the Australian public can be empowered, and therefore prepared, not to be shell-shocked by China’s aggression. It should instead be reassured that the Australian government has the situation in hand and that defence investment is a downpayment on our future security. It should be reassured that the spending makes conflict less likely.

Australia is not a major power, but we have the world’s 13th largest economy and are not without influence. We should stop seeing ourselves as a middling middle power. We definitely shouldn’t act as a small power. We should be confident as a regional power. Our voice, actions and choices matter at home and abroad. It’s why Washington wants us as an active partner and Beijing wants us to be a silent one. Australia’s global advocacy for a rules-based system, and its public calling out of Beijing’s wrongdoing have been highly valued in Europe, Asia and North America.

Smaller regional countries rely on us to stand up to Beijing where they feel unable, while Europe increasingly knows the fight against Russia is also a fight against Russia’s ‘no-limits’ partner, China. And an Australia that stands up for itself and our friends will again demonstrate the value of partnerships to our ally the US.

Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet epitomised show of force as a means to deter conflict as well as preparation should deterrence fail. (Its cruise was also an exercise in long-range deployment.) The time for deterrence and preparation is with us once again. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said this month that China was ready for war, ‘be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.’

We need to show, along with our ally the US and other partners, that war is not what we want but is something we are prepared for. If we cannot show that we have a capable stick, and the intention to use it if required, we will be defeated with or without a fight.

As Teddy Roosevelt said: “Peace is a great good; and doubly harmful, therefore, is the attitude of those who advocate it in terms that would make it synonymous with selfish and cowardly shrinking from warring against the existence of evil.”

The past tells us that navigating strategic competition requires a blend of strategic foresight and political agility. The echoes of 1908 should serve as both warning and guidepost for the uncertain waters ahead.

DeepSeek is a modern ‘Sputnik’ moment for West

The release of China’s latest DeepSeek artificial intelligence model is a strategic and geopolitical shock as much as it is a shock to stockmarkets around the world.

This is a field into which US investors have been pumping hundreds of billions of dollars, and which many commentators predicted would be led by Silicon Valley for the foreseeable future.

That a little-known Chinese company appears to have leapfrogged into a neck-and-neck position with the US giants, while spending less money and with less computing power, underscores some sobering truths.

First, the West’s clearest strategic rival is a genuine peer competitor in the technologies that will decide who dominates the century and, second, we need to step up our efforts to become less not more reliant on Chinese technology.

More than any other single field, AI will unleash powerful forces from economic productivity through to military capabilities. As Vladimir Putin said in 2017, whoever leads in AI “will become the ruler of the world”.

Marc Andreessen, the influential Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist, called the DeepSeek announcement a “Sputnik moment” and “one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs” in AI. The US was shocked into action by the Soviet satellite, Sputnik, investing billions into a public-private sector partnership model that helped win back and sustain tech dominance that would play a major role in winning the Cold War.

Andreessen is right but, in many ways, this breakthrough is even more consequential than Sputnik because the world’s consumers are increasingly reliant on China’s technology and economy in ways we never were with the Soviets.

So what does the West need to do now? Above all we need to stop underestimating our major strategic competitor. If hundreds of billions of dollars isn’t enough investment, we either need to redouble our efforts or work more smartly, bringing governments and the private sector together, and working across trusted nations, as we’re doing with AUKUS security technologies – one of which is of course AI.

We also need to dramatically step up so-called derisking of our economies with China’s in these critical technology fields.

When our leaders say they want us to have consumer choice including Chinese-made tech products, they are ignoring the considerable risks of future Chinese dominance, given we have seen the way Beijing is prepared to use its economic power for strategic purposes, whether through 5G or critical minerals.

As it stands, Beijing will have control over the majority of our smart cars, our batteries, the news our public gets through social media and, if models such as the open-source DeepSeek are adopted cheaply by Western companies, the supercharging power that AI will bring to every other sector.

DeepSeek’s breakthrough should actually come as less of a surprise than the stunned market reaction has shown.

In 2015, China told the world its aim was to supplant the US as the global tech superpower in its “Made in China 2025” plan.

At the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) our research in our Critical Technology Tracker has been showing for almost two years that Chinese published research is nipping at American heels.

It surely isn’t a coincidence that at the end of 2024 and the early weeks of 2025, Beijing has shown the world its advances in both military capability in the form of new combat aircraft, and now dual-use technology in AI. Simultaneously we see Beijing’s obsession with keeping Americans and all Westerners hooked on TikTok, which ensures its users see a Beijing-curated version of the world.

Some observers are arguing that the DeepSeek announcement shows the ineffectiveness of US restrictions on exports of advanced technology such as Nvidia’s advanced chips to China.

Far from backing away from such protective measures, the Trump administration should consider stepping them up, along with further investments in data centres – already under way through the Stargate project.

Restricting chips to China is still an important tool in the American toolkit – it’s just not a panacea.

As Donald Trump’s reportedly incoming tech security director, David Feith, argued last year, the US should also target older chips because “failing to do so would signal that US talk of derisking and supply chain resilience still far outpaces policy reality”.

It’s not certain how much direct support DeepSeek and its backers have received from the Chinese government but there are some clues in the way the company is behaving. The DeepSeek model is open-source and costs 30 times less for companies to integrate into than US competitors.

Founder Liang Wenfeng has been blunt that the company is not looking for profits from its AI research, at least in the short term – which would enable it to follow the Chinese playbook of undercutting competitors to create monopolies. And the firm had reportedly been stockpiling the most advanced Nvidia chips before the US restrictions, and has received allocations of chips apparently through the Chinese government.

These facts hint at the lopsided playing field China likes to create. As Edouard Harris, of Gladstone AI, told Time magazine: “There’s a good chance that DeepSeek and many of the other big Chinese companies are being supported by the (Chinese) government, in more than just a monetary way.”

While the West continues to debate the balance between fully open economies and national industrial and technology strategies with greater government involvement, China has already fused its industry with its government-led national strategy and is evidently stronger for it.

China sees the West’s open economies as a vulnerability through which it has an easy access to our markets that is not reciprocated.

DeepSeek is yet another reminder that China’s technology is a force to be reckoned with and one that its government will use strategically to make China more self-sufficient while making the rest of the world more dependent on China.

We must start recognising this era and responding decisively.

How Labour should deal with China

Keir Starmer’s geopolitical in-tray will arguably be one of the most daunting in recent history. The Prime Minister faces a number of conflicts and hard choices – and a completely different geopolitical landscape to the last time Labour was in power.

Key among these challenges is China, which has risen in the past 14 years to become an economic and military superpower, and a disruptive antagonist to the liberal international order.

A relationship with China requires careful balance and an understanding of the unseen traps that might lie ahead

So far the new government’s position has been mixed. Work has begun on the promised China audit, which David Lammy described as ‘a full audit across Whitehall of our relationship with China so that we can set the direction and a course.’ A new review of the benefits of the Aukus security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States has also been announced. But a decision on China’s potential inclusion in the top tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, requiring all individuals engaged with the Chinese government to formally declare their activities, has been delayed. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer last week held the first call by a British Prime Minister with President Xi since March 2022, and a Beijing trip for the Foreign Secretary is being discussed for the autumn.

A relationship with China requires careful balance and an understanding of the unseen traps that might lie ahead. If Starmer and his team are looking for a practical example of what does and doesn’t work with China, they should study the experience of their Australian counterparts, who also came to power after a long period in opposition.

In its first year, Australian Labor held firm to the strong security position established by the previous government, and was able to secure some important wins.

But subsequent waves of coercion and aggression from China tested the practicality of the government’s cooperation doctrine. For UK Labour, the lesson must be that its ‘compete, challenge and cooperate’ slogan should be understood as a hierarchy – in which competition comes first and cooperation is contingent on China’s actions.

An incoming government cannot predict every new China challenge that will arise, but it can learn some other lessons from Australia.

First, fatalism and declinism towards Beijing are self-fulfilling prophecies, and must be overcome. Australian Labour acted deftly in the Pacific. It brokered meaningful new agreements with Pacific countries to counteract China’s increasing security presence, with tangible results. Britain too has instruments to deploy to make a difference.

Second, good faith compromises will not be reciprocated by China, and will only encourage more malign behaviour. Australia’s initial reluctance to speak up against China’s bullying of the Philippines in the South China Sea didn’t stop the Chinese military threatening Australian forces while they were on lawful patrols, putting Australian lives at risk. China’s breaches of international rules and bilateral agreements must be called out every time, not only when it’s convenient.

Third, no official visits should be made to Beijing before the completion of the China audit. China’s leaders will inevitably seek leverage in areas where sovereign decisions should lie with Britain. Labour should prioritise visits to core Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific allies first.

Fourth, a UK-China engagement strategy must not involve policy compromises, nor set a precedent of cowed silence. Canberra abandoned two World Trade Organization cases against China for its unfair trade practices. Only then did Beijing begin to remove some of the tariffs it had imposed against Australia. This allowed Beijing to mask its economic coercion as an act of magnanimity. Realpolitik has its place, but China should not be rewarded for things it should never have done in the first place.

Fifth, bipartisanship is essential for long-term resilience towards China. Labour should focus on constructively building on the work done by Conservative governments, while filling in any gaps and unfinished business. The new Defence Secretary’s intention to share intelligence briefings with the opposition, and the appointment of former National Security Adviser Stephen Lovegrove to the Aukus review, are welcome signs.

Sixth, be frank and transparent with the British people about the reality of the threats from China and the resources required to address them. Western governments have, at times, refrained from adequately highlighting Beijing’s malign behaviour, such as its support for Russian aggression against Ukraine. This squanders the opportunity to build public support for necessarydefence spending.

Finally, Labour should be aware that we are not simply bystanders in the US-China story. China retains a significant interest in the UK, and Britain holds a considerable degree of agency to effectively project deterrence.  This requires a coherent approach to both domestic and international policy, building on the UK’s strengths in innovation, technology, research, and policy.

In the coming weeks and months, there will be no shortage of voices in Westminster and Whitehall advocating for a fresh start with Beijing and a greater emphasis on dialogue. It is vital that the UK engages with China, but from a position of strength and confidence. The early decisions made by this government will be crucial if the UK wants to succeed against a global competitor more formidable than any we have faced in modern times.

Image: Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Flickr

Australia can’t talk defence by not mentioning China

Writing in The Australian Financial Review on February 5, my former Australian Strategic Policy Institute colleague Jennifer Parker put forward an excellent argument for granting more leeway to serving Defence personnel to speak out on defence affairs, raising public understanding of threats, and building the social licence for increased defence spending. However, one essential word was missing from her argument: China.

China is the state that poses the greatest danger to Australia and the stability of our region. We will not generate or sustain public consent for increased defence spending and the whole-of-nation effort required in the years ahead until our national security establishment stops publicly treating China as taboo.

To be fair, our women and men in uniform and our Defence and national security officials do not have their heads in the sand about Xi Jinping’s China. ADF personnel literally risk their lives to confront the day-to-day reality of Chinese coercion and brinkmanship, as shown by the PLA’s dangerous use of sonar against divers from HMAS Toowoomba and the release of chaff into the path of an RAAF surveillance aircraft.

The public must tap the military’s experience to build our understanding of Chinese sharp power, especially as it seems grimly inevitable that Beijing’s recklessness will lead to a deadly incident sooner or later, plunging us into a crisis for which the nation is sorely unprepared.

While senior Defence staff should become more visible and vocal in our public debate, Defence must also engage at the grassroots, with our veterans, reservists and regulars at all ranks given opportunities for community engagement. This is even more important as the Commonwealth and state governments work to backfill the military’s role in domestic disaster relief. This is necessary to preserve the ADF for its primary duties of deterrence and preparedness for war, but the trust and compact between the military and the nation must not be inadvertent casualties of these changes.

A good starting place for Defence to be candid about the threat posed by China is the forthcoming national defence strategy (NDS). The published version of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) that laid the groundwork for the NDS made shrewd observations about China’s growing military capabilities and coercive playbook. But it followed the tendency in our public debate to use abstractions like our deteriorating strategic circumstances. Such abstractions cloud public understanding of the fact it is Beijing’s actions that are threatening our security and destabilising our region, not amorphous concepts like great power rivalry.

Xi Jinping must learn to accept that democracies, unlike the CCP, have a duty to tell their public the truth.

Greater candour about China also needs to extend into closed-door discussions within government. For instance, the classified version of the DSR was probably restricted to senior echelons of need-to-know ministries because it was clear-eyed on China. And while it was encouraging to hear Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles tell the ASPI conference last year that the DSR includes the most comprehensive review of mobilisation since the Second World War, it’s telling that none of this was deemed suitable for public consumption. This is not a sound foundation for a genuinely national approach to defence.

Being candid about China is not alarmist. Government openness about the threat posed by Soviet communism underpinned public consent for substantially higher levels of defence spending as a percentage of national income during the Cold War, including during Bob Hawke’s Labor government in the 1980s when Defence estimated that we would have a 10-year warning against non-nuclear attack. Our officials, ministers and allies tell us that we now face greater danger, and that attack could come without warning. Yet, the government dons kid gloves when it comes to publicly acknowledging that China is the primary threat.

Plain language on China would also help apportion the scarce resources of Defence and other parts of the national security ecosystem across a range of threats. The DSR calls for an ADF focused on “the nation’s most significant military risks”. But without clarity about which capabilities are required to counter China, there is a risk that the ADF will lose the scale and flexibility to fulfil other essential roles, as shown recently when ships were not available for collective maritime security operations in the Red Sea.

The main impediment to the government being more open about China is China. Labor’s stabilisation of the bilateral relationship is already being sorely tested, as Australian academic Yang Hengjun’s death sentence reminded us. Beijing would doubtless apply further pressure if the Australian government, including Defence, were honest with the Australian public about the scale and urgency of the threat China poses. But Beijing has shown that it will pressure us regardless, so leaving the nation unprepared is unacceptable.

Australia does not seek an adversarial relationship with China, but Xi Jinping must learn to accept that democracies, unlike the CCP, have a duty to tell their public the truth.

Image: Defence Images 2025, LSIS Iggy Roberts

Wong is in an exquisite predicament. She must make China fear her response

Hostage diplomacy is an apt name for the exquisite predicament in which Australia finds itself. An Australian citizen, Yang Hengjun, is held arbitrarily and then, in a shocking decision, sentenced to death. But with the diabolical twist that the sentence is suspended for two years dependent on good behaviour.

Whose good behaviour? Not Yang’s but ours – Australia’s. With Yang as a hostage, Australia is being blackmailed into submission and silence.

Beijing is masterful at planting self-doubt in the minds of rivals. If we speak out against Chinese bullying of neighbours in the South China Sea, will Yang be executed? If we name China as a perpetrator of cyberattacks, will Yang be executed?

If you are worried about what another party might do, they are in control. So, we need to make Beijing worry more about what we might do.

As a smaller nation that abides by rules and norms, the way to do that lies in collective action. Rather than try to walk this treacherous tightrope alone, Australia needs to work with liberal democracies to establish a coalition of nations that can respond to hostage diplomacy and impose a cost – from economic to reputational – on nations that abuse the rule of law this way.

And we are not starting from scratch. In 2021, the democratic world signed the Canada-led Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention. Canada was driven by the experience of having two of its citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, detained arbitrarily because Ottawa agreed to consider an extradition request by the United States for Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer to the telco giant Huawei, whom US authorities accused of fraud.

Canada’s stoutness demonstrated that when a country stands up to bullying, it is standing up not just for itself but for everyone who believes in rules and norms.

The 2021 declaration was a good start, but it needs enforcement mechanisms to stop it being toothless. Australia should start with the Five Eyes group – our partnership with Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States – and the G7 nations, which adds France, Germany, Italy and Japan. It should also encourage participation from other countries that have citizens arbitrarily detained, such as Sweden with Hong Kong publisher Gui Minhai held since 2015. Countries that have experienced Moscow’s and Beijing’s bullying, like Lithuania and other European Union members, would also be powerful partners.

It must be clear to Beijing, and all totalitarian regimes such as Iran, that it will be held to account when it tries to blackmail another country through hostage diplomacy. The only way to deter a malign actor is to convince it that its actions won’t work, and moreover there will be costs. A good recent example of such collective action was Australia, Britain and the US’ use of Magnitsky sanctions laws to target the Russian hacker behind the Medibank breach. Coordinated sanctions help tighten the net around a criminal’s assets.

No one should doubt this is a tough balancing act for Foreign Minister Penny Wong. She is rightly prioritising Yang’s welfare, and therefore the immediate step is to continue the most strenuous representations for Yang’s health and wellbeing.

That means medical care, books, contact with his family and a pathway to him being freed and returned to Australia. He should never have been jailed, and he certainly should not have been sentenced to death. His detention in reportedly harsh and even cruel conditions is a continuing abuse of a man in his late 50s with significant medical ailments who is likely not getting adequate care.

Wong rightly responded on Monday with a clear denunciation of Yang’s sentence. She also trod carefully, saying this was a decision by the Chinese legal system. In truth, there’s no separation between the party-state and the courts in China, but Wong’s language may give the Chinese government space to step in and commute the death sentence.

Yet, this must not mean any kind of backward step by Australia on issues key to our values and long-term interests. If we let ourselves be tugged into a slippery slope of submitting to Beijing’s coercive will, the coercion will continue. And unlike, say Iran, which has taken prisoners as bargaining chips in straight out government-to-government transactions, Beijing tends not to offer any kind of clear exchange but rather builds pressure for long-term submission to its core strategic objectives.

Hence, for Wong, there are short and long-term goals that arise from the Yang case.

Long-term, it’s about having as many countries on our side as possible so that Beijing recognises that to execute an innocent citizen of another country is no longer just a bilateral issue with a smaller power, but a global issue. The risk-benefit calculation changes dramatically.

It’s time for Beijing to stop assuming it can worry Australia, and start worrying about what Australia might do. In this case, we can fight for Yang and our democratic sovereignty.

Image: Defence Images 2023, CPL Brenton Kwaterski

Australia and China have very different notions of stability

The remarks on Wednesday from Chinese ambassador Xiao Qian and other embassy officials confirm what many national security observers have been worried about for months.

If we pull our punches, if we subordinate our values and long-term interests to a short-term effort to orchestrate a trouble-free diplomatic relationship, we won’t actually buy stability. Rather we’ll find ourselves on a slope where nothing we do is good enough, and we will be eternally tempted to find unilateral compromises.

The embassy press conference demonstrated Beijing is looking for Australia to keep sliding ever closer to positions that will satisfy the Chinese Communist Party.

Questions about the sonar burst that our government says injured Australian naval personnel prompted an official to warn against making trouble on China’s doorstep.

Questions about the Taiwanese election elicited further demands that Australia stay silent when Taiwan freely elects a new leader.

These would be breaches of Australia’s core values. We have every right to operate in international waters as HMAS Toowoomba was doing in support of a United Nations mission late last year. And Australia should never shrink from championing the expression of democracy through free and fair elections, as we have through statements on Taiwan’s election that were actually fairly mild.

The day we fail to celebrate people’s participation in their own government – something mainland Chinese people don’t enjoy – is the day we might as well pack our bags and go home, geopolitically speaking. Xiao stated bluntly that Beijing could show no flexibility or compromise on Taiwan, meaning any shift to smooth the waters would have to come from Australia.

Stabilisation is the stated goal of the Australian government, but Beijing has a different definition of stability. Australia wants to co-operate where we can and disagree where we must, but Beijing doesn’t accept when we disagree. This was clear from Xiao’s opening remarks, which painted an ambitious picture of an ever deepening relationship that ignored differences and sought increased co-operation, including joint defence exercises.

Beijing is trying to achieve its strategic objectives through aggression, coercion and threats.

How could we seriously have joint exercises with a military that is bullying a democratic nation in the Philippines through steady and calculated harassment of its vessels in the South China Sea? We couldn’t speak out with a straight face the next time the Chinese navy used water cannon on a Philippines ship. But that’s the idea.

Beijing is trying to achieve its strategic objectives through aggression, coercion and threats. This is its own doing, not Australia’s. Xiao’s naked threat to Australia ahead of the Taiwan poll, warning that support for Taiwanese independence – which is not Australia’s position – would push the Australian people “over the edge of an abyss” should be intolerable.

For the sake of staking out consistent positions on core issues, Canberra should make clear that such remarks are unacceptable. While unlikely to change Beijing’s malign objectives, we would send a signal that stability, to us, doesn’t mean submission, but prioritising our own security, transparently and consistently.

Sonar attacks, threatening Australians with the abyss, unfair trade sanctions – they all demand condemnation because they are breaches of rules and norms that are essential to our region’s future. Inconsistent responses only contribute to the degradation of the rules that have helped keep us secure since 1945.

Xiao also continued the recent Chinese government effort to drive divisions between Australia and Japan, hinting preposterously that the Japanese Armed Forces might have been responsible for the sonar attack.

This points to another Beijing ambition – hamfisted though its execution might seem. It would prefer that regional partnerships are weakened so that it can manage others bilaterally, giving it a sizeable advantage.

But Australia needs friends, partners with whom we co-ordinate and collaborate. We can’t have regional stability unless we work together to balance and deter China, impose costs for its transgressions and gradually persuade it that bullying and coercion will be ineffectual and detrimental to its own interests. Stabilisation can’t become code for tolerating Beijing’s destabilising activity. The UK made this mistake in the 1930s, with disarmament and appeasement policies that tolerated German rearmament and illegal land grabs.

As we start 2024 with increasingly confident authoritarian regimes, wars in Europe and the Middle East and increased tension in the Indo-Pacific, democracies like Australia are faced with two roads diverging. The pathway ahead is not a confected improvement to the bilateral relationship with Beijing that rests on our biting our tongue and entering into arrangements that only leave us more vulnerable, such as returning to an excessive and risky trade dependence.

We are no longer in a period of stability to be maintained but an era of instability that means a business-as-usual approach will be insufficient. Our approach needs extra effort ranging from greater defence investment to diplomacy that manages tensions rather than ignoring them – because whatever the rhetorical niceties, our long-term values shouldn’t be sacrificed for short-term interests. Both roads cannot be travelled.

Image: China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, speaks at the press conference. Mick Tsikas 2024, AFR

Labor ‘softly, softly’ tactic, leaves China holding the big stick

As 2023 draws to a close, how should we assess progress on the government’s stated objective of “stabilisation” in Australia-China relations?

On the face of it, the Australian government has built significant momentum this year towards restoring to an even keel relations with China. The Prime Minister’s visit, in early November, was the obvious high point, signalling a diplomatic thaw after a years-long freeze.

We’ve seen the release of journalist Cheng Lei and the prospect of senior Chinese government officials visiting Australia in 2024. And the government can point to some success in the area in which it has put most focus – securing the winding back of punitive trade barriers Beijing imposed against a range of Australian imports from mid-2020.

Stability is, of course, a laudable aim in the abstract. However, it is becoming increasing clear the diplomatic rhetoric of stabilisation is wearing very thin – and in fact risks being distracting or self-delusory – when the underlying reality is so at odds; namely Beijing’s ongoing destabilising behaviour and the fundamental differences in our strategic interests and political systems.

First and foremost, though least obvious, it encourages a damaging relationship-management mindset towards China. This is a common foreign policy trap Beijing knows how to play to its advantage. Whenever China succeeds in elevating subjectively defined atmospherics as a basis for engagement, it undermines national interest considerations if the other side accepts that differences should be minimised in order to establish goodwill or to maintain access.

Canberra needs to be careful not to overemphasise a relationship-building approach towards China, especially one centred on personal diplomacy between Albanese and Xi Jinping. In China, the PM said he regarded Xi as an “honest and straightforward” interlocutor. Earlier, he said Xi “has never said anything to me that he has not done”. While Albanese may have made such comments in the context and spirit of relationship building, such descriptions are a shaky foundation for a substantive relationship.

The most obvious weakness with “stabilisation” is that it runs directly counter to China’s deliberately destabilising behaviour in the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea and across its land borders with India and Bhutan. This has continued unabated since Labor came to power. In particular, the unsafe and unprofessional use of sonar by a Chinese warship, injuring Australian divers from HMAS Toowoomba right after Albanese’s visit to China, dramatically undercut Canberra’s claim to have steadied bilateral relations. This incident forced an immediate course correction from the government, when Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles condemned China’s “aggressive” behaviour, in a media interview in India.

Beyond scripted joint statements issued at international summits, Australia’s ministerial lineup has appeared reluctant to call out China’s concerning pattern of escalatory and intimidating behaviour towards The Philippines in recent months. Official statements of concern have seemingly been pushed down to the ambassadorial level.

Labelling Beijing’s actions as destabilising has arguably become harder for the government now it has made “stabilisation” the main metric of its China policy. That said, the most recent statement issued by DFAT in support of The Philippines marks a noticeable strengthening in our language, though it also highlights the limitations if not contradictions in the government’s stabilisation narrative. It is also abundantly clear Australia continues to compete geopolitically and directly with China in the South Pacific and that this is driving Canberra’s statecraft in the subregion.

As I wrote in Australia’s Security in China’s Shadow, the paradigm undergirding the Australia-China relationship swung from economics to geopolitics around a decade ago and will not swing back again quickly. A competitive, largely adversarial framing is more likely to define the future than one based on expanding co-operation.

Even in the economic arena, where the government’s diplomatic efforts have borne the most tangible fruit, stabilisation is falling short of Canberra’s expectations. Trade Minister Don Farrell has said he is “very confident” that “by Christmas”, China will remove all remaining trade impediments against Australia, predicting “we will have restored that stable relationship that we want with our largest trading partner”.

In fact, China is likely to defy Mr Farrell’s optimism by keeping a range of trade restrictions in place. This is Beijing’s best tactic to ensure Australia remains absorbed in the “low politics” of bilateral trade, averse to the risks of spillover from more contentious policy differences. Businesses desperate to re-enter the Chinese market are likely to counsel caution against holding Beijing to account in their own cause of stabilisation, narrowly defined. China’s efforts to coerce Australia, including through economic means, have not ended – they are merely likely to take on new and more pernicious forms.

The other shortcoming of the stabilisation narrative is that it underplays the fact the primary explanation for China’s fence-mending approach towards Canberra was not Labor’s superior diplomacy in comparison with the previous Coalition government, but Beijing’s own realisation that its efforts to coerce Canberra into a more compliant mindset had failed.

While certain export industries have undeniably suffered as a result of China’s economic punishment campaign, Australia avoided macroeconomic damage because of the success of market diversification efforts, by both government and the business sector. In fact, the value of bilateral trade with China scaled new heights, because China continued to import the commodities it most needed from Australia, at prices inflated partly by its own politically motivated interference.

The most important revelation from China’s attempts to punish Australia economically was Australia’s underlying resilience as a competitive exporter in a global, rules-based trading system. In the final analysis, Australia’s macroeconomic stability was shown not to depend on the political health of its relationship with China.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has recently transitioned to talking about Australia-China relations in terms of a need to “navigate our differences wisely”. As 2024 beckons, with all of its uncertainties, perhaps it is time to quietly retire “stabilisation” as a narrative that has served its limited purpose.

Image: Anthony Albanese meets Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The Australian 2023.

Tensions must be managed, not ignored. Time to bring funding forward

Geopolitics is driving the dangerous strategic realities that Australia faces.

Beijing’s expansionist agenda is seen through its military aggression and commitment to undermining and changing international rules; Russia continues its revisionist war against Ukraine and a disruptive foreign policy; and we were reminded on October 7 that terrorism remains a top security threat with global implications.

However, the way Australia responds is within our control. Strong foreign and security policies, matched by serious defence investment, can ensure that potential adversaries looking to upend the status quo are deterred from dragging us into conflict.

There are two clear, related priorities. The first is to ensure our foreign and defence policies are consistent and not at odds – the latter being a misstep that seems increasingly likely. The second priority is to invest properly in our defence force.

The defence and intelligence communities have made the hard-headed strategic assessment-articulated in the Defence Strategic Review – that Beijing’s assertiveness is the greatest threat to our security and needs to be checked.

Our diplomacy, meanwhile, has been seeking “stabilisation”, in which we improve the atmospherics of the Australia-China relationship, reduce the focus on areas of disagreement and look for co-operation.

It’s a laudable goal, but is it sustainable or even consistent with our strategic assessments?

There are signs that stabilisation is coming at a cost to our strategy of seeking peace through strength and deterring Chinese aggression by having a highly capable defence force that we will deploy to support regional stability.

We have been too quiet about Chinese breaches of international rules, such as the bullying of Philippines vessels in the South China Sea. When the Chinese navy threatened the safety of Australian personnel, the government sent mixed signals as to how seriously it took the incident, with Defence Minister Richard Marles issuing a clear statement but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unable to say that he had raised the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

That inconsistency removed the opportunity for what should have been a moment of Australian unity in the face of direct confrontation and injury to defence personnel.

There is a growing risk of a defence and foreign policy gulf in which we pull our punches diplomatically while trying to show military credibility through initiatives such as AUKUS and defence exercises.

Indeed, it is why there is an inherent weakness in democracies viewing foreign policy as soft power and defence policy as hard power with distinct roles, while our authoritarian rivals see them as fused.

Our ability to deter aggression will be undermined if our defence policy suggests we face serious threats while our diplomatic communications suggest we don’t.

Good diplomacy isn’t about denying differences but confronting them with clear affirmation of the legitimacy of Australia’s national interests, and our right to protect them.

Otherwise, Australia risks playing into Beijing’s strategy of claiming that any response to Chinese provocation amounts to Australian escalation.

Of course, providing assurances is an important companion to deterrence. The West is justifiably assuring Beijing that we don’t seek regime change in China, Taiwanese full independence, nor to contain Chinese growth where it is rule-abiding and peaceful.

Such messages help reduce mistrust, but assurances alone provide no deterrence, only incentivising more bad behaviour, which is why they must be accompanied with unequivocal signals that we will respond when Beijing breaches rules.

Failure to do so is the mistake that Europe made with Moscow, relying too heavily on assurance that NATO posed no threat to Russia, even while Vladimir Putin escalated aggression after 2008 and as Europe wallowed in complacency with meagre defence spending.

If we do not project the strength to match the reality of the threats, we risk making the dangerous misjudgment that Winston Churchill implored England to reverse in 1932 when he said he could not recall a time “when the gap between the kind of words which statesmen used and what was actually happening in many countries was so great as it is now.

The habit of saying smooth things and uttering pious platitudes and sentiments to gain applause, without relation to the underlying facts, is more pronounced now than it has ever been in my experience”.

The recent AUKUS defence ministers’ meeting showed progress in developing capability but also importantly expressed clear collective intent. The ministers’ statement that “AUKUS contributes to integrated deterrence by pursuing layered and asymmetric capabilities” sent a clear signal to Beijing.

These signals can’t be limited to defence ministers-our long-term sovereignty requires deterrence to be a national priority, baked into our economic and industrial policies, bringing industry and the public along the journey and not merely surprised when crisis hits.

At the bottom line, the Albanese government needs to invest in defence in a way that matches the rhetoric that statements such as the DSR have expressed.

Resourcing defence to match a damped-down foreign policy aim of stabilisation may result in short-term savings but will only lead to more spending down the track.

As ASPI’s budget analysis in May stated, the additional funding the government has promised beyond the forward estimates period needs to be brought forward. Budgets are tight, but we are not going to deter aggression unless we are prepared to put real money into defence capabilities.

It would be wonderful if all states got along and if all conflict and unfair competition could be resolved by diplomatic niceties. History shows this is wishful thinking.

Diplomacy is vital but it is ineffective if viewed as the good cop to defence’s bad cop; a message to adversaries that we do not have the willingness and competence to use our hard power.

Meanwhile, our own industry perceives a lack of seriousness and our public senses a lack of need and justification for investment.

Indeed it is defence investment that helps ensure diplomacy can focus on managing, not ignoring, tension.

It is the will to confront difficult realities and think through worst-case scenarios that provides the greatest chance of developing effective strategies to deter them, and to be best prepared if they do eventuate.

Image: kremlin.ru 2013, Wikimedia Commons

Beijing’s bullying of Philippines a test of Aussie mettle

Last weekend, China’s Coast Guard and maritime militia carried out dangerous and aggressive manoeuvres against a small Philippines boat, blocking and blasting it with a powerful water cannon.

The vessel was trying to resupply a remote Philippines armed forces garrison on Second Thomas Shoal, in the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands, within the Philippines undisputed Exclusive Economic Zone.

This brazen escalation by China is a test for the Albanese government’s readiness to speak up in defence of the international rules-based order, and to show support for a key security partner in Southeast Asia­ – a region Can­berra has identified as critical to Australian interests.

At the AUSMIN meeting last week in Brisbane between Australian and US defence and foreign ministers, our two nations committed to upholding a “global order based on international law” and “fundamental principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

They expressed their “strong opposition” to destabilising actions in the South China Sea, including “the dangerous use of coast guard vessels and maritime militia”. They specifically denounced China’s excessive maritime claims as inconsistent with international law and reaffirmed their support for the landmark 2016 arbitral tribunal award in The Hague, which found in favour of the Philippines in its maritime legal dispute against China.

Washington reacted swiftly to the incident at Second Thomas Shoal, issuing a clear condemnation of China’s actions, simultaneously reassuring Manila and warning Beijing that any escalation to an armed attack on Philippines government vessels would be covered under the US-Philippines Mutual Defence Treaty. This was consistent with Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin’s June commitment to the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling at the Shangri La Dialogue when he stated: “It is ­legally binding, and it is final.”

By contrast, Canberra has so far refrained from issuing a statement from either the Foreign Affairs or Defence portfolios. The Australian ambassador to Manila did tweet concern about “dangerous and destabilising” actions but, unlike her US counterpart, did not name China.

AUSMIN communiques are important, but they tend to be general and not widely read. The test was always going to be holding specific actions to account. The longer this official reticence about China is maintained, the more it calls into question Australia’s willingness to live up to its rhetoric on the South China Sea when the Philippines has unambiguously been on the receiving end of bullying and intimidation by Beijing.

It is to the Albanese government’s credit that bilateral relations with China have improved and tensions have reduced. But the formulation of “co-operating where we can and disagreeing where we must” is not sustainable if the policy means trying to reduce tensions by ignoring differences. This doesn’t deter Beijing’s destabilising actions; it emboldens them.

If Australia does not strongly call out such a provocative and destabilising breach of international law, one has to wonder what constitutes an issue on which we “must” disagree with Beijing. Consistency is vital in international relations. In this case, it would both demonstrate Australia’s commitment to the rules-based order and signal to all countries, including China, what actions we consider unacceptable. The danger of choosing what “must” be dealt with on an ad hoc basis, rather than by principle, is the same diplomatic error that led major European powers to think a default of silence and inconsistent engagement in the face of Russia’s aggression would eventually lead Russia’s Vladimir Putin back to the straight and narrow.

International rules either mean something or they don’t. In the valid attempt to reduce regional tensions, signing onto communiques that few read while failing to speak up when it matters most risks reducing trust in both Australia and the multilateral system.

We stood up for the Philippines in 2016 when the tribunal ruled against Beijing, and we should do so now. This is a core issue for Manila. Less than a month ago, Philippines Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo thanked the US and Australia for their support on the 2016 arbitral award. The Philippines has become one of Australia’s most important defence partners in the region. It was among the first to support AUKUS and has a bilateral visiting forces agreement enabling a high level of access, including Australian surveillance flights over the South China Sea. It is not in Canberra’s interests for Manila to doubt the strength of Australia’s commitment.

Failing to hold Beijing to account for maritime breaches would be another mistake in the mould of the misjudgment to end our World Trade Organisation case against Beijing’s punitive tariffs on Australian barley. Abandoning the case spared Beijing the indignity of another adverse international legal ruling that would have deterred Beijing and held it to account on economic coercion. It would also be a mistake to leave the condemnation to the US, as that serves Beijing’s strategic narrative that the issues at stake are only about great power competition and US containment of China. We are all competing to shape the world in which we want to live – it is not a struggle limited to the US and China. Australia has a vital role by demonstrating that regional stability requires all nations to contribute.

Australia doesn’t have to fight every battle. But to win a competition, you have to play in it. The law-and-order principles set out in the AUSMIN communique go to the heart not just of our security and sovereignty, stretching from the seabed to space, but to the collective security of our region. If that isn’t worth standing up for, what is?

Image: China’s Maritime Militia and fishing fleets, pictured in the South China Sea. The Australian 2023.

Tag Archive for: China

The FT’s Demetri Sevastopulo on Trump’s tariffs and the disappearing Chinese general

The United States-China tit-for-tat tariffs have been escalating faster than the bids at a Sydney house auction in the early 2010s. ‘Trade war’ is the headline. But does Donald Trump have a strategy to decouple, or is he angling for a grand bargain? Either way, Xi Jinping is making it clear that China has a vote (even if its people don’t).

Demetri Sevastopulo, the Financial Times’ US-China correspondent, explains the possible plays behind the numbers, the rival points of leverage in the brewing trade war, the implications for US partners and allies, the competition for influence within the Trump administration, and the latest on TikTok and Taiwan.

Demetri also gives us a real-time analysis of his latest scoop in the FT, revealing the purging of the PLA’s number two general, He Weidong.

Authoritarianism and the future of Hong Kong with Kevin Yam and Ted Hui

In the latest episode of Stop the World, David Wroe speaks to Kevin Yam and Ted Hui, two of Australia’s most prominent exiled Hong Kong democracy activists. 

Kevin is a research fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School and a commentator on China and Hong Kong. Ted Hui is a lawyer who was previously a member of Hong Kong’s legislature before he was forced to leave in 2020.  

David, Kevin and Ted talk about the current state of democracy in Hong Kong and how authorities are applying the sweeping national security law that was imposed on the region by Beijing in 2020. They also discuss the recent mass sentencing of pro-democracy activists under the national security law, including the case of Australian man Gordon Ng who was sentenced to smore than seven years in jail. 

With four Australian judges remaining on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal, they also discuss whether there is value in foreign judges remaining on the court, or if they are legitimising an authoritarian regime, and examine the Australia-China relationship and the impact it has on Canberra’s position on Hong Kong. 

Guests:

Kevin Yam  

Ted Hui  

Japan’s security, partnerships and regional strategic outlook with Narushige Michishita

In this episode of Stop the World, we bring you the penultimate episode in our special series recorded from the sidelines of the ASPI Defence Conference ‘JoiningFORCES’.

This interview is all about Japan and regional security. Dr Euan Graham, Senior ASPI Analyst speaks with Narushige Michishita, professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo and Japan Scholar with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia Program. The conversation covers Japan’s perspective on the strategic outlook in the Indo-Pacific, the role of the US-Japan alliance and the evolution of the Australia-Japan relationship. Euan and Michishita also discuss Japan’s major investments in defence, including a promise to increase defence funding by 60 percent, and opportunities to increase regional cooperation on security, including through AUKUS.

Note: This episode was recorded on the sidelines of the conference, so please forgive the less than perfect audio quality.

Guests:

⁠Euan Graham⁠

⁠Narushige Michishita

Mapping China’s data harvesting and global propaganda efforts

ASPI has released a groundbreaking report that finds the Chinese Communist Party seeks to harvest user data from globally popular Chinese apps, games and online platforms in a likely effort to improve its global propaganda.

The research maps the CCP’s propaganda system, highlighting the links between the Central Propaganda Department, state-owned or controlled propaganda entities and data-collection activities, and technology investments in Chinese companies.

In this special short episode of Stop the World, David Wroe speaks with ASPI analyst Daria Impiombato about the key takeaways from this major piece of research.

Mentioned in this episode:
Truth and reality with Chinese characteristics

Guests:
David Wroe
Daria Impiombato