Before the Shooting Starts: China’s Game of “Chicken” By Tom North
If the truth be known, China is already testing the waters for a kinetic engagement with Australia, as China is actively engaged in cyber-attacks upon Australia. Last week there was the sonic attack upon Australian navy divers, which the cowardly Biden, sorry, Albo government took on the chin, too scared, and too socialist, to object. Communist China has, apart from the ongoing harassment of Taiwan, conducted “risky behaviours” against Australian, Canadian, Philippine and US vessels and aircraft, including the use of water cannons, lasers and harassment manoeuvres.
As noted in the commentary below, it is only a matter of time before someone from our side gets tired of this game of oriental chicken and fires back. Then it will be on.
ANALYSIS
Beijing’s acoustic assault on an Australian warship last week follows a well-established pattern: China is pushing hard in the legal ‘grey zone’ beneath an outright act of war. But it’s a deadly game. All it takes is one mistake for the shooting to start.
Two Royal Australian Navy (RAN) divers were injured last week when a Chinese warship activated its sonar close to HMAS Toowoomba.
The Australian frigate was disabled in international waters at the time. Its propellers were tangled in a fishing net. The divers were attempting to cut it away.
The Chinese destroyer PLAN Ningbo reportedly acknowledged it had received HMAS Toowoomba’s warning that it had divers in the water. But it physically assaulted them with powerful underwater soundwaves, regardless.
“The Chinese vessel’s behaviour was not the result of a misunderstanding or a lack of communication,” argues security analyst Markus Garlauskas and retired US Rear Admiral Philip Yu. “At a minimum, this behaviour was unsafe and unprofessional by the standards of international law and maritime norms and conventions. However, this was not an isolated instance, and taken in full context, it almost certainly amounted to an intentional, if nonlethal, acoustic aggression for coercive purposes.”
Former British Royal Navy warship captain Tom Sharpe agrees.
“In this case, either the PLAN have done the sums on how much power to put into the water at their chosen range to ‘injure not kill’, they were guessing, or they had no idea what effect it could have. I’ll let you decide which is more worrying,” he writes for UK media.
But the political uproar within Australia, confused international analysts, and uncertain reactions may be exactly what Beijing wants.
“It’s classic grey zone stuff, specifically designed to make a conventional response difficult,” Sharpe adds.
It’s also known as “lawfare”. Plausible deniability. Brinkmanship. Intimidation.
Basically, it’s the idea that bullying will get you whatever you want.
China’s defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian this week called Australia’s account of the incident “completely untrue” and that Beijing has issued a formal protest to Canberra.
“We urge the Australian side to respect the facts, stop making reckless and irresponsible accusations against China, do more to build up mutual trust between the two sides, and create a positive atmosphere for the sound development of relations between the two countries and two militaries,” Wu said.
Pushing the limits
Shortly before the HMAS Toowoomba incident, the US released a list of recent “risky behaviours” by China against Australian, Canadian, Philippine and US vessels and aircraft.
The list of physical assaults includes the use of water cannons, lasers and dangerous manoeuvres. But most of these incidents have been between coast guard, militia and fishing vessels. Not warship to warship.
Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner called this a “co-ordinated campaign”.
He said this emphasised the need to restore military-to-military lines of communication between the Pentagon and Beijing.
But not everybody is convinced this will change anything.
“First, the communications channels will likely simply be used by the PRC to repeat the “party line” about what occurred in an incident rather than sharing any meaningful new facts,” Garlauskas and Yu argue in an essay for the Atlantic Council think tank.
And the party line was exactly Beijing’s response to Australia’s complaint over the injuries to HMAS Toowoomba’s crew.
“Second, the Chinese will likely deflect any US efforts to use a bilateral PRC-US line of communication to discuss PRC (People’s Republic of China) military interactions with a US ally’s forces.
“Third, the PRC is unlikely to live up to any agreements reached through such channels.”
They point to China’s past behaviour as evidence for this.
It promised not to militarise its illegal island outposts in the South China Sea. But it did.
It repeatedly promises to respect the United Nation’s International Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Then it asserts it doesn’t apply anyway.
Also, In 2014, Beijing signed an agreement detailing the Rules of Behaviour for Safety of Air and Maritime Encounters based on long-established international law and conventions. That’s what should have been applied during the HMAS Toowoomba incident.
“The PRC has repeatedly and flagrantly violated the letter and the spirit of the memorandum, as it did in this latest incident,” Garlauskas and Yu write.”
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