Why Australia’s Getting Tough on China Again

Filed 6d ago · Via Foreign Policy · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Since 2022, Australia's Labor government pursued a deliberate 'stabilization' of relations with Beijing, dropping confrontational rhetoric even as China sanctioned Australian wine, barley, lobster, and coal — sanctions fully lifted by December 2024. Trade boomed regardless, with exports to China nearly doubling from $116 billion in 2017 to $218 billion in 2023.

That discipline held through a Chinese naval flotilla circling the continent and unannounced live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea, but cracked after Prime Minister Albanese told the New York Times that China seeks regional 'hegemony.' Beijing then tested a nuclear-capable missile in the Pacific, which Albanese called 'provocative,' just as Canberra signed new defense pacts with Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Vanuatu.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

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Turns out the thing that finally moved Canberra off its carefully rehearsed 'stability' script wasn't the warships or the surprise gunnery drills — it was a missile test timed suspiciously well against a defense-pact signing. Betting the strategic house on Pax Americana is a bold plan for a country that just watched its allies stress-test its patience twice in one summer.

Source: Read the original at Foreign Policy → Scored: Circus of Freaks · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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