An unprecedented move by Chinese warships to “circumnavigate” Australian territory has touched a nerve, as the country grows increasingly concerned about China’s reach and intentions in the region.

Australia’s military spotted three Chinese warships on Feb 10 in the Arafura Sea, off the northern tip of Australia.

But Canberra appeared to have little inkling that the ships were just setting out on an unprecedented voyage that would bring them within 150 nautical miles of Sydney, as part of what is likely to be – according to Defence Minister Richard Marles – a complete circumnavigation of Australia.

The ships first made national and international headlines on Feb 21 when it was revealed that almost 50 commercial flights were diverted after the Chinese warships sent an alert that they were planning to conduct live-fire exercises about 640km off Australia’s east coast.

The exercises do not appear to have breached international law. But they have fuelled deep anxieties in Australia about whether China poses a direct military threat, and stirred political divisions over how to handle Beijing.

Indeed, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was asked by a reporter on Feb 28 whether the ships could be rehearsing for land strike missions against Australia. This followed comments from hawkish former home affairs head Mike Pezzullo, who said the Australian Defence Force (ADF) should have deployed fighter jets and submarines to stalk the Chinese ships and send a message that they were in the “kill zone”.

Mr Albanese, who has sought to improve ties with China since his election in 2022, dismissed these suggestions and continued his attempt throughout the saga to downplay the presence of the ships. He said China had complied with international law, though he criticised Beijing for giving almost no notice about its live-fire exercises off the east coast, saying Australia would typically give 24 to 48 hours’ notice.

“We have made it very clear that we expect more notice to have been given,” he said.

The Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Mr Xiao Qian, had defended the naval deployment, saying there was no requirement to give additional notice of its firing exercises. He told ABC News on Feb 20 that it was “normal” to dispatch warships to different parts of the region and that such exercises were likely to be repeated.

“They are part of the efforts to train, to practise and to rehearse,” he said. “There should be no over-reading into this.”

However, it was almost inevitable that the Australian media and public would read much into this apparent lapping of the continent by Chinese warships, which had never previously circumnavigated Australia.

It also seemed inevitable that opposition politicians would try to seize on the growing sense of national insecurity in the lead-up to an election due to be held by May 17.

Mr Peter Dutton, leader of the opposition Liberal-National Coalition, criticised Mr Albanese on Feb 27 as weak and incompetent and being “completely out of his depth” on defence.

“I’ve never seen a prime minister floundering like this prime minister on the issue of national security,” he told 2GB Radio.

Is it a real crisis?

Since news broke about the Chinese naval exercises, the Australian public has closely followed media updates charting the path of the warships, with news reports declaring that they have now “entered the Great Australian Bight” (a southern bay) and “may head to Western Australia”. On the morning of March 1, the ADF said the warships were 890km south-west of Adelaide.

Analysts largely agreed that China had complied with international law, but expressed mixed views over whether the anxieties prompted by the warships’ voyage were justified.

Former naval officer and maritime security expert Jennifer Parker, an expert associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College, told The Straits Times the Chinese exercise was “not a crisis” and had generated excessive levels of anxiety.

“Some of the commentary – that this is an act of aggression or a rehearsal for a missile strike – is fundamentally unhelpful and just plain wrong,” she said.

“I don’t think we should be worried about this activity. If we treat this as a crisis, we eat up our capacity to deal with a real crisis.”

Professor Peter Dean, director of the foreign policy and defence programme at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, told ST he believed the exercise was designed to send a “pointed message” to Australia and New Zealand about China’s capability to target both with sea-based attacks.

He said China had not broken laws, but had breached norms by failing to give adequate notice of its firing exercise and by deploying warships to the area with no apparent purpose beyond intimidation.

“This is fundamentally different to the types of operations our navy takes in the region, which is done with friends, allies and partners, often transiting through maritime superhighways,” he said.

“This is a message of strength and power. We shouldn’t overhype it, but this is out of the ordinary.”

Still, almost all analysts agreed that the show of strength highlighted the need for Australia to boost defence spending, from current levels of about 2 per cent of gross domestic product.

Though China is Australia’s largest trading partner, it is also increasingly seen as a threat. According to a poll by the Lowy Institute in 2024, 71 per cent of Australians believe it is likely that China will become a threat in the next 20 years.

Putting Chinese ambassador on notice

The depth of Australia’s China anxieties was also evident from an address on Feb 19 by the nation’s spy chief Mike Burgess, who, without naming China, warned that Australia faces unprecedented interference and espionage threats.

Notably, Mr Burgess invited the Chinese ambassador to attend the agency’s national threat assessment, where he gave the address.

Discussing the decision to invite the ambassador, Mr Burgess told Sky News on Feb 20: “(China) can be left in no doubt where and what the issues are for us, and that’s all part of the important relationship we need to have with all nations.”

But the difficulty for the government is that its pleas for calm and its attempt to keep ties with China stable are likely to be increasingly vulnerable to political attack as public anxieties grow.

According to Mr Burgess, the threats to Australia are worsening, including a heightened risk of terrorism, attempts to incite violence against local communities such as the Jewish community, and attacks on critical infrastructure.

And the weeks-long Chinese naval deployment, which continues to be watched by Australians as it makes its way around the continent, will do little to calm the public’s nerves.

Jonathan Pearlman writes about Australia and the Pacific for The Straits Times. Based in Sydney, he explains matters on Australia and the Pacific to readers outside the Oceania region.

— In association with Asia News Network