China says its test this week of a long-range missile from a nuclear-powered submarine in the south Pacific was a routine exercise that nobody should read too much into. That’s not how its Pacific neighbours see it.
Nothing to see here?
When China announced on Monday that it had fired a nuclear-capable, long-range ballistic missile into international waters in the south Pacific, Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese was quick to express concern.
“There is no doubt that this is a provocative act by China which does destabilise the region,” he said.
The test drew a similar reaction from New Zealand, Japan and the Philippines, while the United States condemned the test as part of what it called Beijing’s “rapid and opaque nuclear weapons build-up”. Papua New Guinea’s prime minister, James Marape, called on all military powers to stop using the ocean for missile tests.
“The Pacific is our home. It sustains our people, our environment and our future. Let it remain a place of peace, not conflict,” he said.
China responded by telling everyone to calm down, pointing out that it had notified countries in the region in advance of the test, which used a dummy warhead on the missile.
“It is a routine military training activity that is not directed at any specific country or target. The countries concerned were informed prior to the launch. It is consistent with international law and customary international practice,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.
“The whole process was safe, standard and professional. We hope relevant countries will not read too much into it.”
It is true that such tests of unarmed missiles are routine for nuclear-armed states to make sure that they are working properly and can still hit their targets. The US has conducted almost 200 tests similar to the one China launched this week, most recently off the east coast of Florida last September.
China is alone among the world’s nuclear-armed states in maintaining an unconditional no-first-use policy, which means that it will never initiate a nuclear attack. Its nuclear deterrence is based on its second-strike capability, the capacity to survive a first nuclear strike against it and to launch a devastating retaliatory nuclear attack.
Submarines are central to any second-strike capability because they are effectively invisible and cannot be targeted in a first-strike attack. China’s nuclear arsenal is much smaller than those of the US and Russia but it has been growing and modernising dramatically in recent years.
Monday’s test came hours after Australia and Fiji signed a new mutual defence treaty that is part of a broader effort to counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific region. The contest is over military access and denial across the island states scattered across the vast ocean space and China’s challenge to a security order that has seen Australia and New Zealand dominate the south Pacific while the US holds sway in the North Pacific.
China has been deepening its engagement with the Pacific islands through trade, loans, investment, infrastructure projects and increasingly police and security co-operation. Australia’s treaty with Fiji came days after it made an agreement with Vanuatu that designates Australia the archipelago’s preferred security and policing partner.
Fiji and Vanuatu have agreed to consult with Australia before allowing third parties (meaning China) to get involved in critical infrastructure, technology and security sectors but stopped short of giving Canberra a veto. Beijing is unlikely to give up on expanding its influence across the Pacific and Monday’s missile test showed that it does not need a military base on one of the islands to demonstrate its military reach.
The foreign ministry’s “nothing to see here” message about the missile test on Monday was complicated by an editorial the following day in another part of China’s outward-facing information system, the Global Times. Describing the test as a milestone that demonstrated “formidable strategic deterrence capabilities”, the paper said that China’s rivals and adversaries should take note.
“This will compel external powers and their followers to abandon attempts aimed at forcing Chinese concessions through maximum military pressure or pre-emptive strikes, thereby fundamentally reducing the risk of large-scale conflict in the Taiwan Straits, the East China Sea and the South China Sea,” it said.
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