Joe Keary
Beijing has temporarily adjusted how its military operates across the Indo-Pacific. This includes less aggressive behaviour from flotillas sailing deep into the region and its military engagements inside the first island chain.
But it’s a tactical calibration, not strategic adjustment. President Xi Jinping is making the most of a geopolitical window shaped in part by Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The long-term trajectory of Chinese power projection remains unchanged.
In a parliamentary committee hearing yesterday, Defence officials confirmed that another Chinese naval task group sailed deep into the Indo-Pacific late last year, travelling into the southwest Pacific after first being detected in the Philippine Sea. Chief of the Defence Force Admiral David Johnston said the group approached Australia but stayed ‘more than 200 nautical miles’ from it. The group didn’t enter Australia’s exclusive economic zone.
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