Chinese warships with ‘extremely capable' missiles alarm New Zealand and Australia
Chinese warships conducting unusual exercises near Tasmania are armed with 'extremely capable' long-range ballistic missiles, New Zealand's defence minister warned.
The three ships, known as Taskgroup 107, undertook live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea on Friday and Saturday, triggering a diplomatic row and forcing commercial airlines to divert flights mid-air.
Judith Collins, the New Zealand defence minister, said: 'We've certainly never seen a task group of this capability undertaking this sort of work, it's certainly a change.
'The weapons they have are extremely capable. One has 112 vertical launch cells and has reported anti-ship ballistic missile range of 540 nautical miles.'
The drills happened much further south than usual, and come amid tensions over Taiwan and in the South Pacific, where Western influence is waning in the face of a resurgent China.
Australia and New Zealand are tracking the vessels, which are 320 miles east of Tasmania but came within 150 miles of Sydney last week.
The Australian Defence Force said the formation consisted of a frigate, a cruiser and a replenishment vessel, and had been travelling down the coast of Australia since mid-February.
The ships have not crossed into Canberra's territorial waters – 12 nautical miles from the coastline – but are inside Australia's exclusive economic zone.
Wellington and Canberra both said the live fire actions happened at much shorter notice than would be expected.
'They're not telling us what they're planning,' Ms Collins said on Monday. 'We're taking them at face value that they are undertaking normal transits when it comes to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, that they're not breaking the law.
'But as we've said, it is always better to give a lot more notice when it comes to live firing.'
After Australia's prime minister said it would have been 'appropriate to have given more warning', a spokesman at China's defence ministry claimed Canberra had 'deliberately hyped it up' with an account that was 'completely inconsistent with the facts'.
Ms Collins said the latest war exercises were a sharp demonstration that New Zealand needed to 'clearly step up our game'.
'I think we should be very aware that we live in a world of increasing geopolitical competition, that the seabed of the Pacific Ocean is viewed by some countries as an area of enormous resource.'
'We have to be aware that we are in a situation … in the Indo-Pacific region, of sitting on an enormous treasury with a very small lock to protect it.'
Though Australia and New Zealand are dependent on Chinese trade, they are at odds on strategic issues including the South China Sea, Chinese influence in the South Pacific and the Taiwan Strait.
Analysts said the latest war exercises, conducted some 6,000 miles from China, were 'very unusual'.
'This is a very unusual demonstration of force so far from China's mainland, without clear messaging from China about its intentions towards New Zealand and Australia,' Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told Bloomberg.
'[It] disrupted civil aviation and raises serious doubts about the credibility of Beijing 's rhetoric and assertion that it is not a threat to the peace and stability of the entire Pacific.'
China is increasingly projecting its military power in the Indo-Pacific region, where it has been courting strategic new partners and potentially lucrative resources.
The Cook Islands, which operates in 'free association' with Wellington and whose citizens hold New Zealand passports, struck a controversial 'strategic partnership' deal with Beijing earlier this month.
It does not include defence, but instead centres on economic, infrastructure and maritime, and seabed mineral development.
New Zealand said it was not consulted on the deal, and warned that it could have 'significant security implications' for the region.
Winston Peters, New Zealand's foreign minister, said he would raise the country's concerns during a three-day trip to China set to begin on Tuesday.
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