17 hours ago
‘Not foes': China to Aus amid nuclear build-up
Xi Jinping's envoy in Canberra says China and Australia are 'not foes', despite being embroiled in a regional rivalry and Beijing rapidly building up conventional and nuclear military capabilities.
Anthony Albanese has been facing domestic and international calls to boost the defence budget, with the US warning of a potentially 'imminent' threat from China in the Indo Pacific.
But the Prime Minister has resisted, making Australia an outlier in the West – a position highlighted by NATO's decision last week to dramatically hike military spending to 5 per cent of GDP.
Chinese ambassador Xiao Qian on Monday urged Mr Albanese to stay the course.
'Recently, some countries hyped up the so-called China threat narrative on occasions such as the Shangri-La Dialogue, G7 summit and NATO summit, proclaiming to significantly increase defence expenditures, and even incited Australia to follow suit,' Mr Xiao wrote in The Australian.
'Such rhetoric and actions are steeped in Cold War mentality, blatantly creating division, fuelling a global arms race as well as threatening world peace and stability, which warrants our high vigilance.
'By playing up international and regional tensions and slandering China's normal military build-up, these countries are merely seeking nothing but excuses to drastically grow their military spending, even arbitrarily reaching beyond its geographical scope and mandate.'
He accused 'certain countries' of trying to contain China because they 'fear fair competition' and 'cannot tolerate other countries from making progress'.
Mr Xiao's piece comes as Foreign Minister Penny Wong heads to Washington for a second meeting with her Quad counterparts within six months.
The Quad, made up of Australia, India, Japan and the US, is a partnership broadly seen as a check on China's economic and military might.
Earlier this month, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth warned China could invade the democratically self-governed island of Taiwan as early as 2027.
Such a move would deal a major blow to global supply of semiconductors – crucial components in modern tech – and massively disrupt vital trade routes.
'Let me be clear, any attempt by Communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world,' Mr Hegseth told the Shangri La Dialogue.
'There's no reason to sugar-coat it. The threat China poses is real and it could be imminent.
'We hope not but certainly could be.'
Meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles on the sidelines of the conference, he directly asked Australia to boost the defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP.
The Albanese government was quick to brush off the request, saying Australia would set its own military budget.
But days later, Mr Marles, who is also defence minister, admitted China's growing nuclear arsenal was driving 'security anxiety'.
'I mean, we've made no secret of the fact that we have a security anxiety in relation to China that's principally driven by the very significant conventional military build-up that China is engaging in, and, for that matter, a nuclear build-up that China is engaging in,' he told reporters.
'We've made that clear to China itself.'
As of mid-2024, China's operational nuclear warheads exceeded 600, according to the US Department of Defence.
That was nearly triple what the country was estimated to have in 2020.
More recently, Mr Marles refused to say whether three Chinese warships that circumnavigated Australia earlier this year targeted cities when they carried out exercises off the country's vast coastline.
Appearing at New Corp's Defending Australia Summit, he said was asked point blank if the ships rehearsed strikes on Australian cities or onshore facilities.
'Look, I do know the answer to the question,' he said.
'I don't think it's appropriate or helpful for me in this situation to speculate about it for a range of reasons … and the most significant being what we did with the Chinese task group was to engage in an unprecedented level of surveillance on that task group.
'So we do know exactly what they were doing and exactly what they're rehearsing.
'For me to start talking about that obviously reveals our surveillance capabilities, which is why I'm reluctant to.'
