The US deputy secretary of defence has made a grim warning about China’s aggressive military intentions towards Australia.
There is “real reason for concern” over China’s growing threat to Guam, Hawaii – and Australia – the US deputy secretary of defence has warned.
President Joe Biden appointee Kathleen Hicks told a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) forum that the world could not ignore chairman Xi Jinping’s aggressive rhetoric.
“In past years, we could see their capability growth (but) we were not sure what their intentions were. Now they’re being pretty clear about their intention,” she said.
It’s not just Xi’s words. It’s that his rapidly expanding military can now back them up.
“The Chinese are advancing their capabilities at a remarkable clip,” Ms Hicks told an audience of international affairs experts.
“Those capabilities include… a very clear pattern of expanding the range of their capability to deny other interested parties, whether that’s around Japan, whether that’s around Guam or even Hawaii. And if you’re Australia, it includes getting closer to Australia – (and) the ability to threaten their interests.”
Aircraft carriers. Helicopter carrying assault ships. Tank carrying assault ships. Ultra long-range missiles and aircraft.
“We’re seeing their capability growth,” Ms Hicks said. “And I think the lights are going on in many places. And I think one of those places is Australia.”
Are they coming south?
“The prospect of Chinese military action against Australia remains remote,” the Lowy Institute’s Thomas Shugart states in his recent Australia and the Growing Reach of China’s Military report.
“But China has the military and industrial potential to field a long-range power projection capacity that would dwarf anything Japan threatened Australia with during the Second World War,” he concludes.
That’s not to say it will. Only that, as the decade unfolds, it could.
When combined with Mr Xi’s blusterous rhetoric, Mr Shugart argues it’s something strategists must consider.
Beijing has begun mass production of large amphibious assault ships. Three 35,000-ton Type 075 Landing Ship Docks (LHDs) – similar to, but larger than, Australia’s two Canberra class ships – have been launched within the past two years alone.
“Combined with what is on pace to be the region’s largest force of warships on any measure by far — and one that in the future seems likely to field multiple carrier strike groups — China has the potential to field a long-range sealift and power projection capacity that would dwarf anything that the Japanese threatened Australia with during the Second World War,” notes Shugart.
Japan’s World War II attacks on Australia came as a shock. The aircraft carrier assault on Darwin on February 19, 1942, was larger than that hurled against Pearl Harbor. Air and submarine raids continued for months, reaching from Broome in Western Australia to Sydney Harbour itself.
But an invasion of Australian territory was only briefly considered by the Japanese. It didn’t have the shipping necessary to move or sustain enough troops to do so.
Spheres of influence
“Assuming ongoing US involvement and support, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is unlikely to be able to seriously threaten the environment in Australia’s immediate region, nor Australia’s sovereignty, in the immediate future,” writes Mr Shugart.
It’s an assumption that may have a shelf-life.
“China aims to destroy America’s strategic primacy in East Asia by denying the Western Pacific to the power projection forces on which it has always depended,” argues ANU Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies Hugh White.
It’s a scenario where the United States may not be willing or able to assist in Australia’s defence.
“We have real reason for concern ourselves, let alone those treaty commitments,” says Ms Hicks, referring to the equally increasing vulnerability of US bases on Hawaii and Guam.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) senior analyst Dr Malcolm Davis warns China has put particular emphasis on developing long-range precision missiles. The ground-launched DF-26 is in operation, and a series of air-launched ballistic missiles are in development.
They can reach the US bases in Guam. They can also go deep into Australia’s north and northwest – making many important but unprotected, strategic facilities vulnerable to attack.
Then there’s China’s rapidly expanding aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine forces. These may exert ‘indirect’ military pressure in response to any future diplomatic crisis by blockading Australia’s critical shipping lanes.
“Australian defence planners need to start thinking about these two military challenges more seriously,” argues Dr Davis.
“The sheer ability of the PLA to take such extreme steps places pressure on decision-makers whose actions are weighted with the fear that force might be used against them,” adds Mr Shugart.
Siege mentalities
“China need not attempt to invade Australia to subdue it,” Mr Shugart warns. “It may only need to establish a blockade which, with the world’s largest coast guard, 10,000 ton’ maritime safety’ vessels, and the most powerful navy in the region over the horizon, it could be well-equipped to do.”
It’s a “grey zone” conflict. It’s where the force applied isn’t quite enough to justify all-out conflict. It’s where it’s inconvenient for allies to make more than a fuss.
“China could bring the full weight of its maritime forces to bear against Australian commercial shipping – quickly cutting off vital supply chains including essential fuel supplies,” Dr Davis argues. “The most effective way to achieve this would be to seek to control chokepoints in maritime Southeast Asia from forward bases in the region”.
Among those chokepoints could be counted Australia’s remote Indian Ocean island outposts – the Christmas and Cocos Islands.
Cargo ships won’t have to be sunk. Simply scaring them away will suffice. Australia, after all, doesn’t own any bulk carriers or tankers of its own.
Nor can it guarantee the safety of those approaching its waters.
“For over a century now, new technologies have relentlessly made ships much easier to find and sink,” argues Mr White. “That explains why China has been able to, relatively easily, raise the risks to major US power projection forces in the Western Pacific.”
It also means vital trade can be held to ransom.
“I cannot think of a credible, practicable way to defend them,” says Mr White. “The range of imports Australia depend on is so vast, the distances over which they must come are so great, the means to attack them are so varied, and the task of defeating those attacks is so daunting, that I cannot conceive how it can be done, when sea denial is so easy and sea control is so hard.”
Fortress Australia?
Mr Shugart says Australia’s most vital interests are likely to remain secure for the next five to eight years.
“This is because, for the most part, Chinese military power remains hemmed inside the First Island Chain, with other adversaries to worry about before it could reach and assault Australia’s vital interests,” he writes.
Any likely conflict would be to support like-minded Asian democratic partners and the United States,” he adds, conceding this would expose WA and Northern Territory bases and facilities to attack.
These would be limited, he states, due to distance and Beijing likely already having “its hands full with US and allied air and sea power within the region”.
But everything changes once the United States is removed from the equation.
“China appears to be building a force specifically intended to be able to eject the US military from the western Pacific by force, to stare it down in a crisis, or to encourage the United States to step away from its current commitments due to overstretch, defeatism, or frustration with allies,” Mr Shugart warns.
That, he says, could leave Australia and others open to coercion.
Ms Hicks conceded the possibility in her CSIS address.
“They (China) are developing capabilities in certain areas that are beginning to compete very effectively with what the US could bring to bear to defend those interests,” she said.
But Washington’s strength lies with its allies, she added. “It’s about what the US can bring as a global power, and with a lot of other countries who are now increasingly concerned about what China is trying to do.”
She emphasised US efforts – such as the new AUKUS technology-sharing pact – remained about deterrence.
“Our goal is not to have any conflict armed conflict with China,” she said. “It is to reduce tension and demonstrate a credible deterrent so they are not tempted, with this rhetoric and this capability, to overreach.”
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel
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