China’s ambitions will make 2021 the year of the wolf warrior at the door

Xi Jinping may think this is the moment to apply maximum pressure on Taiwan. Picture: Getty Images

If the tradition still holds, arriving on Scott Morrison’s desk this week will be a report setting out the intelligence community’s best guesses (they will call them “judgments”) as to big strategic developments that could go horribly wrong in 2021.

We will probably never see that report, so in its place here are my best judgments (you can call them “guesses”) as to the likely prospects for peace, conflict and the in-between stage now called the “grey zone”, where aggressors advance their interests covertly.

Here are a couple of take-to-the-bank strategic certainties for 2021: First, there will be no repair or reset to our China relationship because Xi Jinping’s Communist Party thinks it’s essential to “punish” Australia so other democracies don’t get the uppity idea that the party will treat them respectfully as equals.

Beijing is probably just beginning to work through the list of Australian exports to be banned or punished with tariffs. Don’t be surprised if the party starts to limit tourist and student visas ahead of any real resumption of travel.

A Chinese navy ship in Sydney in 2019. Picture: Dylan Robinson

Aggressive, insulting propaganda will ramp up, the worst of it directed to Mandarin speakers. How ugly can this get? Pre-COVID-19 there were more than 10,000 Australian citizens in mainland China, 100,000 in Hong Kong. The number now will still be substantial. DFAT’s Smart Traveller advises that Chinese “authorities have detained foreigners because they’re endangering national security. Australians may also be at risk of arbitrary detention”. We don’t know how far Xi will take his use of the ideology of “struggle” to mobilise aggressive nationalism, but this is now a central element of his rule. Australians in China need to be conscious of the personal risk this creates.

The irony is China is helping Australia achieve the substantial delinking from its economy our sovereign interests and self-respect need. Thanks, wolf warriors.

Another certainty is that Australia will continue to be under full-on cyber assault, principally from China, but it’s also likely in my view that the Russian intelligence hack into America’s government, security and business networks via the Texas company SolarWinds will impact Australia.

The attack using SolarWinds’ “Orion network monitoring product” is so serious the White House’s National Security Council met to discuss it last weekend. Notwithstanding Donald Trump’s undisciplined tweet suggesting China rather than Russia was the culprit, it seems most likely Russian intelligence installed malign code into a legitimate SolarWinds update from March, which SolarWinds sent to 18,000 customers to install. This software allowed attackers remote access to the unclassified databases of the Pentagon, US military, intelligence agencies and organisations managing the US nuclear arsenal.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian. Picture: Reuters

Should Australia be worried? A review of the government’s AusTender contract database reveals many federal departments and agencies are recent customers of SolarWinds, including Defence’s Chief Information Officer Group, equipment-purchasing Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group and the Defence Science and Technology Group.

Other recent Australian customers include cyber intelligence agency the Australian Signals Directorate, Department of Home Affairs, Austrade, Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Department of Finance, Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.

My understanding is that SolarWinds’ compromised Orion product accounts for about half the company’s business. Maybe there’s no problem in Australia — or we’re just yet to hear of a major security compromise. The government’s Australian Cyber Security Centre recommends “disabling internet access to Orion servers”. The wider point is that Australia is constantly under sustained cyberattack from sophisticated and persistent state actors that have shown a determination to get into our networks, ranging from parliament to security and intelligence agencies, universities and businesses.

Does the Morrison government have the right level of attention on cyber security? We have yet to hear a minister comment on the SolarWinds attack from an Australian perspective. In the recent ministerial reshuffle, the word “cyber” has disappeared from the title of any minister in Morrison’s second ministry.

Medical staff members wearing protective clothing to help stop the spread of a deadly virus which began in the city, arrive with a patient at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in January. Picture: AFP

It’s true Marise Payne has a strong interest in cyber international diplomacy and Peter Dutton’s Department of Home Affairs released a Cyber Strategy last August, but cyber security is central to supply-chain security and the risk to our critical infrastructure is growing.

What is the risk of military conflict in 2021? Australia’s Strategic Update, released in July, says “the prospect of high-intensity conflict in the Indo-Pacific, while still unlikely, is less remote than in the past”. In my view this understates the risk.

All through 2020 we have seen China’s military engaged in high-risk exercises and air and sea-space incursions against neighbours in the South and East China Seas and around Taiwan. A bloody hand-to-hand fight along the line of control in the Himalayas saw India and China engaged in direct combat.

Xi’s wolf warrior nationalism is clearly clouding China’s normally cautious military judgment. Around its borders, this burst of nationalist overconfidence could give rise to a military confrontation that starts, perhaps as the mistaken sinking of a ship or shooting down of an aircraft, and then escalates until political intervention pauses military action.

Beijing clearly thinks it has a window of opportunity to advance its military control around the so-called “first island chain” from Japan to Taiwan and The Philippines. With the US going through an ugly presidential transition and wracked by COVID-19, Xi may think this is the moment to apply maximum pressure on Taiwan. Would Joe Biden intervene to defend Taiwan? If he failed to do so that would end America’s Pacific alliances. More likely, Washington would provide military support and expect Japan and Australia to be involved.

What Australia should do in the event of conflict or a military stand-off over Taiwan is one of these awkward discussions Canberra prefers not to have. But there is no exit strategy from our own region.

Finally, North Korea. Expect it to test Biden’s resolve early either by a nuclear test or intercontinental missile launch. Over three generations the Kim family regime seeks to push the US into concessions in return for nuclear negotiations. Biden must confront the horrible reality North Korea now has close to a reliable capacity to hit an American city with a nuclear warhead. Trump’s failed attempt to negotiate directly with Kim leaves Biden with deadly unfinished business.

Peter Jennings is the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and ex- deputy secretary for Strategy in the Defence Department.