A complex strategic challenge

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s warning about China ramping up its aggression in the South China Sea underlines the brazen opportunism of the Chinese Communist Party seeking to further its strategic ambitions while the world battles COVID-19.

As Amanda Hodge reported on Friday, a Chinese warship locked its radar guns on a Philippines naval vessel in an act tantamount to signalling an inbound missile. Australian Strategic Policy Institute director Peter Jennings said the incident was “a hostile act against the Philippines” that “topped the list’’ of China’s bad behaviour.

The list does not end there. China has used naval and coastguard vessels to harass Malaysian oil-exploration boats, to sink a Vietnamese fishing trawler near the disputed Paracel Islands, and to intimidate Indonesian fishing vessels. Such bullying, Euan Graham of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Singapore says, is to capitalise on the “big opening” provided by the coronavirus pandemic.

In a response last Tuesday, three warships from the US Seventh Fleet, accompanied by Australian frigate HMAS Parramatta, sailed close to the standoff between Chinese vessels and the Malaysian oil-exploration boats. More will be needed to deter Beijing’s posturing as it amplifies propaganda about the COVID-19 outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The aircraft carrier is a major US naval asset in the Pacific; China claims its problems with the virus are a sign of US naval vulnerability in the region.

Mr Pompeo’s warning that “Beijing has moved to take advantage of the distraction” of the pandemic has significance for the entire world. A third of global shipping, worth $US5 trillion ($7.8 trillion) a year, passes through the South China Sea. The International Court of Arbitration’s 2016 ruling concluded Chinese claims to 90 per cent of the South China Sea were without basis in law. That did not deter Beijing turning reefs and outcrops into islands and turning specks of land into bases with harbours, runways and missile batteries. Its latest forays coincide with its proclaiming new Chinese administrative districts in the occupied Paracel and Spratly Islands, despite long-time claims of ownership by Vietnam and the Philippines.

Beijing’s aggression is not confined to the South China Sea: it has also intensified its hostility towards Taiwan, which won global acclaim for its successful fight against the Wuhan virus, despite its proximity to the Chinese mainland. As Greg Sheridan wrote on Saturday, the world is entering a “dangerous period of destabilising military activity by Beijing with serious risk of miscalculation”.

In a different sphere, as revealed in The Weekend Australian Magazine, bullying was the hallmark of a spiteful campaign faced by Olympian Mack Horton and his family after the swimmer took a stand for clean sport against Chinese drug cheat Sun Yang.

Australia has to be pragmatic and careful, as John Howard says. As some Coalition MPs push for the nation to become less reliant on China economically, Mr Howard, who had vast experience managing the bilateral relationship successfully, is right when he warns that turning it on its head would not serve our interests. Mr Howard backs the government’s moves to close the border to China early in the COVID-19 crisis and to pursue an independent global investigation into the origins of the virus. But, as he says, Australia has good trading and people-to-people ties with China. These should be fostered. At the same time, the US and its allies must show their resolve to protect the region has not lessened.