No need for alarm - it’s only China
Friday, 10 July 2026
Martin van Beynen is a Press journalist and regular opinion contributor.
OPINION: Submarines have always seemed a particularly sinister and menacing part of the military.
They lurk, they prowl, they sneak, largely out of sight and earshot in the ocean depths, ready for a deadly strike on other vessels or targets onshore. They emerge out of the water as monstrous black killers with devastating munitions tucked under their reptilian plating.
When we learned this week that China had launched a long range ballistic missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, from a submarine near the China coast towards a spot about 7000 kilometres away in the Pacific Ocean, alarm bells rang.
Those alarm bells will keep ringing for a few more weeks as the Pacific states huff and puff their “concern”. There will be various carefully worded communiques, expressions of strong protest and maybe a joint statement from the Pacific Islands Forum before things go back to normal.
Whatever response Pacific leaders, including those of New Zealand and Australia, choose to make, it will reflect the tension between the Pacific’s increasing economic dependence on China and its security dependence on the United States and Western democracies.
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The reality is most of the Pacific islands have tied themselves to China through trade, infrastructure projects, investment and development assistance. China remains the largest trading partner of both Australia and New Zealand by a long shot. Both the Solomon Islands and the Cook Islands have signed secret agreements with China. In many Pacific states, cosiness with China vacillates according to which faction is in charge.
Larger factors are at play. Thanks to many illuminating articles in the local and international media, the bigger picture behind the test is starting to emerge.
Parity in the nuclear arms race means having the ability to fire your nuclear warheads from land, air and sea. Ballistic missiles warheads need to be tested regularly and for that you need plenty of space, preferably thousands of kilometres of open ocean. The US, for instance, conducts five to 10 tests of its Minuteman and Trident missiles over the Pacific every year, experts say.
In the past China mostly tested its long-range missiles within its own borders but it used the South Pacific to test its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in 1980, and in 2024, when it launched an ICBM from Hainan Island to an area in the South Pacific 11,700km away.
Launching ICBMs from submarines is obviously a different kettle of fish, and China, according to New York Times China reporter Chris Buckley, is playing catch-up with the US in terms of submarine technology. Since stealth is the object with submarine warfare, China’s subs have been far too noisy but a new range, probably built with the help of recently acquired Russian technology, suggests much progress is being made.
New subs and new missiles obviously need testing and what better place than the endless Pacific. No-one should be surprised if many more Chinese tests are conducted over the next few years.
The Chinese have described the latest test as routine and professional and cautioned against “over-interpreting”.
The first question, pertinent because China is a strong advocate of a rules-based international order, is whether the tests were in keeping with international law and protocols.
University of Canterbury China expert Anne-Marie Brady, in an article in The Press, says that no international law regulates submarines conducting missile launches in international waters.
“As with the live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea in February last year, China is using international rules or lack of them, as a shield for an act of intimidation and show of force,” Brady writes.
Australian Minister for Pacific Island Affairs Pat Conroy told the ABC the tests were inconsistent with the Hague convention on ballistic missile testing “which would require more notice and greater information provided to countries”.
China gave other countries only a few hours notice of the tests which minimised the opportunity for prior bellyaching.
What does it all mean? The Global Times, a Chinese newspaper controlled by the Communist Party, quoted an expert saying the “the Liberation Army’s sea-based nuclear force is capable of carrying out stable, reliable, strategic counterstrikes from anywhere in the vast open seas of the Pacific Ocean”.
Some see the test as a rebuke to Australia for signing a mutual defence alliance with Fiji, but since the test took months to organise that could only be true if China knew about the pact well in advance (which it probably did). The new treaty is part of Australia’s efforts to sign pacts that make it the regional “hub” for its Pacific island country partners.
Before the latest signing, China was already upset about America’s promise to supply nuclear-propulsion technology to Australia under Aukus and the prospect of Australia acquiring late model American submarines in the next decade. Australian sailors are already training on American subs, which are next year set to use a base being constructed near Perth.
If China’s latest ballistic missile test had a message it was most likely this: “America, we are building our submarine capabilities fast and we intend to match you in the Pacific. Pacific leaders, get used to us flexing our military chops in the the Pacific and remember who butters your bread.”