Is a flotilla of Chinese ships on a reconnaissance mission for a future invasion of Australia or, as the Australian Defence Force admits, is China doing to us what we’ve been doing to them for decades?
The great Chinese Navy expedition
What started out as fairly reasonable coverage of three Chinese PLA (People’s Liberation Army) Navy vessels navigating in international waters off Australia’s east coast did not take long to descend into hysteria. Reports that two ships, a frigate and a cruiser (along with a third supply ship) had engaged in two “live fire” exercises in the Tasman Sea pushed it to the top of news bulletins.
Nowhere was it reported what the exercises actually were; in military terms, live fire could mean firing high-calibre guns on the ship’s deck using live ammunition. The tone of mainstream media reports was that the Chinese ships were firing missiles into the path of commercial airliners traversing the Tasman between Australia and New Zealand.
First reports of the intended live-fire attack came from a Virgin Airlines jetliner. However, the suggestion peddled in mainstream media reports is that the Virgin pilot witnessed the firing of weapons and was forced to take immediate evasive action. What actually happened was the pilot picked up a radio message on an open international channel, where the Chinese radio operators, in English, announced they intended to undertake live fire exercises.
The pilot radioed Air Services Australia and thus the alert. As pointed out by ANU professor Donald Rothwell in The Conversation, the actions of the Chinese ships did not break international law or conventions. Further, the Australian and New Zealand navies had presumably been tracking the Chinese ships long before their live fire exercises began.
The story elevated to such a point where it was leading bulletins on FM radio. If that’s not a victory for China alarmists, what is?
Into the mix, Nine Newspapers’ Peter Hartcher (25/02/25) announces, of Australia’s stabilised China relationship under the Albanese Government: “Tell that to the People’s Liberation Army Navy task group exercising off Australia’s east coast. Or the People’s Liberation Army Air Force pilot who fired flares at the RAAF surveillance plane two weeks ago – one of three life-threatening encounters in the past 18 months.” Hartcher needs no excuse to fuel rhetoric that a Chinese invasion is imminent.
The encounters to which Hartcher refers include a Chinese fighter, earlier this month, firing off flares in front of an Australian spy plane operating far closer to Chinese territory than the three PLA Navy ships sailed to Australia.
Australia freely admits this, with an Australian Defence Force (ADF) statement on 13 February saying, “For decades, the ADF has undertaken maritime surveillance activities in the region [South China Sea] and does so in accordance with international law, exercising the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace.”
The relevant point is “for decades” Australia has been doing to China what China is now doing to Australia. In November 2023, it was reported that HMAS Toowoomba had “provocatively” sailed through the Taiwan Straits, far closer to mainland China than the three Chinese ships sailed to our shores.
At that time, Australian defence analyst Euan Graham was quoted as saying the Australian navy regularly transits through the Taiwan Strait but “chooses not to publicise it”. It should be noted that — unlike the east coast of Australia, Tasmania or New Zealand — Taiwan is recognised as a potential flashpoint for a catastrophic major global conflict.
In late September 2024, the RAN and RAAF joined the US, Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines in joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Two weeks earlier, the RAAF participated in joint military exercises with the US and Italy. In August 2024, the RAAF joined the US, Canada and the Philippines in military exercises in the same contested waters.
In November 2023, Chinese diplomats protested to Canberra for not informing Beijing that HMAS Toowoomba was conducting exercises in contested waters in the South China Sea.
Beijing has decided it’s time for payback, because China plays the long game in diplomacy. It would be nice if our mainstream media expressed at least some level of curiosity about the geopolitical and cultural nuances of our biggest trading partner that underscore its actions.
The gold anchor…
With so many reports to choose from, the Anti-China Media Watch “Gold Anchor” award goes to the Australian Financial Review for giving column space to former Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst, Michael Shoebridge.
He writes (25/02/25), “Beijing knew its no-notice actions would cause civilian passenger aircraft to urgently divert to avoid the danger live-fire drills pose. The Russians shooting down MH-17 in 2014, killing all 298 people on board, including 38 Australians, shows what trigger-happy people with surface-to-air missiles can do.” The non-paywalled article also appears on his website.
So now the Chinese are “trigger-happy people with surface-to-air missiles”? Aside from Shoebridge’s piece, there’s no suggestion the Chinese were firing surface-to-air-missiles. To equate the actions of these Chinese ships with the tragedy of MH-17, an airliner flying over an active combat zone, is a huge stretch.
Shoebridge pushes back against Chinese state media reports that this naval excursion is tit-for-tat over Australia constantly sending naval ships and military aircraft to conduct live-fire exercises on the periphery of Chinese waters. He writes, “They know this is nonsense and that the comparison only works by avoiding some uncomfortable facts for China.”
If it’s such nonsense, why does the ADF (see above) admit we’ve been doing it for decades? Shoebridge says it’s different because when we go to the South China Sea or the Taiwan Straits, we’re invited by China’s neighbours. All the same, it’s done to antagonise the Chinese, and Shoebridge knows it. Since 2018, when he first joined ASPI, until today as founder of Strategic Analysis Australia, he’s made a tidy living out of antagonising the Chinese.
Animated reports on Chinese patriots
ABC reports (20/02/25) on Chinese animated film Ne Zha 2 becoming the highest grossing animated picture of all time, surpassing Pixar’s Inside Out 2, with $2.66 billion at the box office. The story opined that Chinese companies were “sending busloads of staff to see the film in a show of nationalism”.
Is the mainstream media that desperate it has to invoke red flag waving communists marching off to the movies? This is not China’s Top Gun, it is a cartoon about a boy god who fights dragons. Are we so threatened by the Chinese that we cannot accept most of its population heads off to the cinema to be entertained, not indoctrinated?
Australian mainstream media reports on Ne Zha 2 are not inherently anti-Chinese, but they fall back on language and tone that, due to essentially no more than our cultural differences, cast suspicion over even the most innocent of actions.
Nine Newspapers (24 February) reports on Ne Zha 2’s success, “[Chinese] Audiences have been urged to see the film to help fend off the latest Marvel movie, Captain America: Brave New World, and criticism of it has been decried as ‘unpatriotic’.”
Dare we say it, any Australian moviegoer choosing not to see a Marvel film is downright un-American!
Marcus Reubenstein is an independent journalist with more than twenty-five years of media experience, having previously been a staffer with a federal Liberal Party senator from 1992 to 1994. He spent five years at Seven News in Sydney and seven years at SBS World News where he was a senior correspondent. As a print journalist he has contributed to most of Australia’s major news outlets. Internationally he has worked on assignments for CNN, Eurosport and the Olympic Games Broadcasting Service. He is the founder and editor of Asian business new website, APAC Business Review.