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oundtable • non-claimant perspectives on the south china sea
profound an interest as any country in the avoidance of armed conflict
or escalation. Australian policy on the South China Sea consistently
calls for restraint on all sides. Australia is understandably seeking to
build a reasonable security relationship with China, alongside its massive
economic one, and it is not in Australia’s interests to be gratuitous,
needlessly provocative, or entirely insensitive to how China defines its
own interests in the South China Sea. Canberra does not take sides on the
territorial claims and has been an advocate of practical confidence-building
measures, transparency, and dialogue, including in ASEAN-centric
forums such as the East Asia Summit.
At the start of 2016, as China’s island-building moves to completion
and with no rules-based solution to the South China Sea tensions in
sight, the limits of a mostly declaratory policy approach by countries such
as Australia have been made plain. A series of speeches and statements
by ministers and officials throughout 2015 suggested that Australia was
firming up its South China Sea policy. Following the publicized activity of
the destroyer USS Lassen in October 2015, Canberra openly supported the
U.S. policy of conducting freedom of navigation operations. 16 Intriguingly,
it then came to light that Australia was quietly continuing to conduct its
own activities to assert its rights of freedom of navigation in the South
China Sea, or more specifically of overflight. In December 2015, a BBC
journalist intercepted and broadcast radio communications from an
Australian P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft telling Chinese forces
the plane was exercising rights under international law. Australian media
reports suggested that the tempo of these flights had increased as a sign
to Beijing that Australia did not accept claims to maritime territory or
authority supposedly generated by China’s artificial islands. 17
What Lies Ahead: Choices and Costs
The question arises, what else is Australia likely or prepared to
do to protect its interests in response to China’s behavior in the South
China Sea? There had been some initial speculation that the moderate
conservative government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who
replaced the markedly right-wing Tony Abbott in September 2015, would
16 Shalailah Medhora, “Australia Strongly Supports U.S. Activity in South China Sea, Says Marise
Payne,” Guardian, October 27, 2015.
17 David Wroe and Philip Wen, “South China Sea: Australia Steps Up Air Patrols in Defiance of
Beijing,” Sydney Morning Herald, December 15 2015.
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