China flexes in the Tasman Sea
Friday, 21 February 2025
ANALYSIS: The China war games in the Tasman Sea on Friday are the latest in a pattern of increased Chinese assertiveness in the region, that should leave no one in any doubt.
China is trying to flex, to demonstrate how it can project its power into the region. According to Australian PM Anthony Albanese and NZ Defence Minister Judith Collins they operated in accordance with the law. Just what happened on Friday - apart from confirmed changes of commercial flight paths - remains to be seen.
As professor David Capie told me on Friday evening, it is a remarkable piece of signalling by the People’s Liberation Army and simply further evidence of its ability to project into the region.
No one really knows why the Chinese chose this particular time or location. There are theories - such as the fact the US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel J. Paparo visited Australia in the past few days. It could be related to that.
It could be related to the Cook Islands dispute - a New Zealand realm country signing a deal with China, something both NZ and Australia have expressed alarm at. It could have been partly timed ahead of a Foreign Minister Winston Peters trip to Beijing next week.
Or, it could have been about none of these things. The black box that is the authoritarian communist regime mostly means educated guesses and reading the tea leaves in speeches.
But what it should demonstrate is something that has been, quote, unfashionable to admit for some decades among whole swathes of New Zealand’s political elites, across all parties. We have a geo-strategic rival, in the region, that wants to demonstrate and project its power.
That is something that must be taken seriously - which Defence Minister Judith Collins clearly does and which Labour’s Andrew Little did before her.
China cannot be ignored, and it doesn’t want to be ignored. There is a tendency amongst elected politicians to sometimes discount these moves as China just posturing or chest-beating. But there is clearly a longer game at play here and part of it is China’s vision to grow great again after what it calls the Century of Humiliation at the hands of foreign powers.
That might not matter particularly today. But it could in the years ahead if, for example, the United States has a president that decides it doesn’t want to lead and sustain the rules-based international order any more - and considers allies as little more than freeloaders and that authoritarians are tough guys to be respected. Hang on, that might be today.
China is not a power that plays by the rules of others. It makes its owns rules. In 2016 the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague made a ruling on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea rejecting China’s claim to the nine-dash line and said that militarising the island in the South China sea was illegal.
China simply did not recognise the decision, claiming it was “null and void.”
Great powers are called such because they have power and are prepared to use it. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has had a remarkable period of peace and prosperity with no serious rival to US power until recent years. This has not been the natural state of humanity for most of history.
There will be no shortage of those saying this is not a big deal. And it is true, no one needs to beat this up into more than it is. But New Zealand should expect this more regularly from now on. The world is changing.
Correction: A previous version incorrectly stated that Foreign Minister Winston Peters was currently in Beijing (corrected 7.04am Saturday 22 February).