What’s behind China’s ballistic missile test?
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Music and more. Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis, the host of Politics Now. And throughout the week on the podcast, I'm joined by the brightest political minds at the ABC to wade through the political spin and bring you the analysis you need to know. We go beyond the headlines, digging into the key political stories of the day and making sure we have a little bit of fun along the way. I don't think it's an aberration. I don't think it's just rogue. I don't think it's just temporary. I think politics is being smashed and anyone who thinks... That it's just a passing thing is completely deluded.
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This week, from a submarine hidden in the sea off China, Beijing launched a nuclear-capable ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean, gave Australia and other nations about 24 hours' notice. So what's Xi Jinping up to? Today, Sam Roggeveen from the Lowy Institute on China's massive expansion of its nuclear arsenal and what it means for us. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Sam, on Monday, China began alerting a number of nations that it was about to test a nuclear-capable long-range missile. Now, without the warhead attached, of course. Australia was on that list. So just tell me, how do you reckon those conversations would have gone down?
Oh, I doubt there would have been much conversation at all. It would have been just a straight communication that China was about to launch with no conversational negotiation entered into. This is a standard protocol. Australia has since objected that China didn't give enough notice, that typically it's 48 hours and China did far less than that. We don't know why China chose such short notice. I think one possibility is that 48 hours perhaps gives other countries such as Australia time to put some intelligence collection assets in place. China may have wanted to avoid that.
Okay, so Australia, New Zealand, Japan, they were alerted via Chinese diplomats and other nations, we presume. And at 2.01pm Sydney time, a Chinese submarine launched the ballistic missile, which according to state-run Chinese media, successfully hit its target.
It travelled over the Philippines, Guam and past Micronesia, landing in waters about 1,000 kilometres northeast of Solomon Islands. China's a good friend of Solomon Islands, but this is not something a friend does. This is not good in our region. We are living in a region that is probably nuclear-free and has a history here. But also, we don't want to see increasing militarisation in our region.
We regard this, one, as destabilising, and two, as counter. to the vision of the Pacific that has been articulated very clearly by Prime Minister Rambuka and other Pacific leaders. But what do we know at this stage?
We don't know a lot. In fact, we don't even know what kind of missile this was. It was either a JL-2 or a JL-3, which is one of the two systems that China has developed for launching missiles nuclear warheads over intercontinental distances from submarines that are submerged at sea. And we know roughly that the missile was launched from the South China Sea and in that way was probably intended to avoid overflying Japan. Typically tests like this are designed to validate systems that are already in service. So it's probably more likely than not that this was the JL2 system, which is already on board Chinese nuclear submarines and which is designed to, as I said, fire nuclear warheads over very long ranges, long enough to hit the continental United States and by implication also Australia.
Yeah, okay. Well, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, he says it was a provocative act.
We don't want to see any action that is destabilising or which undermines the peace, security and stability of the Pacific and the region.
But China says it was just routine military training and it was in accordance with international law. Now, the Pacific's minister, Pat Conroy, he doesn't think it was.
It's not consistent with the Hague Convention on ballistic missile testing, which would require more notice and greater information provided to countries.
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