China’s poor seamanship has been rejected by international navies

Despite China’s belief that it can control all the seas, the belligerence and poor seamanship of its navy risks sparking an accident or conflict.

Last week top officers from 46 of the world’s navies gathered in Sydney for the Indo Pacific 2023 expo on all things military and maritime.

There were debates on conventional versus nuclear powered submarines, the merits of frigates over corvettes and whether destroyers were obsolete in today’s maritime domain.

But the one thing there was consistent agreement on was China’s navy was the most unprofessional outfit in the world whose belligerence and poor seamanship risked sparking an accident or conflict.

That was one of the reasons the Chinese were not invited to attend the international forum, they have no respect for the laws of the sea and thus the sea’s regional navies.

The PLA navy has 350 “battle force ships” making it the biggest navy in the world and from that position of strength and arrogance believe it can control all the seas regardless of territorial waters of nations, or international waters and rights of passage.

HMAS Toowoomba is among the ships challenged by the Chinese. Australian navy divers were injured by a destroyer’s sonar while underwater.

Fifteen years ago it barely had a navy to speak about but they embarked on an expansion program suspecting to control the seas would be to control the region. The outcome has been stunning.

A Chinese PLA-N Luyang-class guided missile destroyer leaving the Torres Strait and entering the Coral Sea. Picture: AFP

That program has included island creation in the South China Sea to extend its insistence it controls the entire body of water from its shoreline to the beaches of the Philippines and threatens and harasses ships that pass through including the RAN and commercial trade vessels.

Such is the PLA-N arrogance, it thinks nothing of also communicating from its warships with commercial aircraft including flights by Qantas with ridiculous claims it also owns the airspace above the sea.

At the expo US Pacific Fleet chief Admiral Sam Paparo warned Australia the Chinese “arc of aggression and coercion” had been steep and was a genuine maritime hazard. He was right.

Originally published as China’s poor seamanship has been rejected by international navies