Defence Minister Richard Marles sounds huge warning over China’s ‘massive’ and ‘opaque’ military

The Defence Minister has accused China of “the biggest military build-up” since WWII in a stunning speech – but admits that for Australia, it’s extraordinarily complex.

Australia is facing the most difficult set of international issues since the end of the Second World War, as China launches a “massive” and “opaque” arms race that has the Indo-Pacific region on edge, Richard Marles has declared.

The Defence Minister said the current power struggles with China were even more complex for Australia than the Cold War and the Vietnam War.

Mr Marles said the situation was not as “existentially fraught” as the Cold War, nor was Australia engaged in all-out conflict: “But from a strategic point of view, it was a question of being with America or not.”

“Right now … we are presented with challenges from our largest trading partner (China) which make the path forward far from obvious.”

In comments that will infuriate Beijing just days after it attempted to start fresh with Canberra, Mr Marles said China was “engaging in the biggest military build-up that we’ve seen since the end of the Second World War”.

Defence Minister Richard Marles told the Centre for Strategic and International Studies Australia has not faced a more complex set of international issues since the end of World War II.

“It is massive. It is completely changing the strategic circumstances of the Indo-Pacific and I think beyond the world,” he told a forum at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Tuesday SA time.

“We completely accept the right of any country to modernise its military and China has that right as well. But a build-up of that scale needs to happen in a way that is transparent and what we are seeing with China right now is opaque.”

Mr Marles said transparency was vital to give neighbouring countries “a sense of confidence”.

Launching a four-day visit in Washington, Mr Marles vowed to the Biden administration Australia will boost its military power to avoid a “catastrophic failure of deterrence” in the Indo-Pacific.

He heralded the AUKUS nuclear-submarine deal the “heart of deterrence” in the region and vowed Australia’s military would have “greater lethality” and “greater ability to engage in area denial”.

Last week Beijing ordered an end to a diplomatic freeze with Canberra, as Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Australia’s Penny Wong in Bali last week.

In the first foreign ministerial meeting between the two nations for three years, China issued a bizarre list of four demands to improve ties.

One included Australia must reject “manipulation by a third party” – alluding to the US.

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