Coercion and circumnavigations are China’s new normal warns outgoing spy boss

Major conflict could break out in the Indo-Pacific region within the decade as coercion and Chinese naval circumnavigations of Australia become the new normal, the nation’s departing spy chief has warned.

Andrew Shearer, director general of Australia’s national intelligence, made the grim prediction to Senate Estimates after Defence Minister Richard Marles confirmed that Defence was monitoring a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N) task group currently in the Philippine Sea.

“We do not have a sense of where it is going, but we continue to monitor it,” Mr Marles told reporters in Canberra.

In February, a People’s Liberation Army-Navy task group circumnavigated Australia, catching the Government by surprise when commercial air pilots flying between Australia and New Zealand became the first to sound the alarm that the Chinese were conducting live firing exercises in the international waters below.

Mr Shearer said at the time that the exercises and the circumnavigation, China’s first of Australia, was a demonstration of Beijing’s “growing capability to project military power, into our immediate region, now matched by an increasing intent to do so.”

Speaking at his last appearance before Senate Estimates as Director-General of the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), Mr Shearer said these deployments would become a reality for Australians.

“China’s growing power projection across a widening swathe of the Indo-Pacific, exemplified by the February circumnavigation of Australia by PLA Navy Task Group 107 demonstrates the speed, confidence and reach that now characterise regional military capability development and competition,” he said.

Under questioning by Liberal Senator Dave Sharma, a former diplomat, Mr Shearer said China was also testing Australia’s responses.

“I won’t go into them in detail, but there were aspects of that particular deployment that in our preliminary assessment were intended to have an intimidatory effect on us, and by extension on other nearby countries.”

Mr Shearer would not say if the intelligence community believed that the Chinese felt that they had achieved their objectives.

“There will be further such task group deployments and we would expect them to become more frequent and to continue demonstrating that ability to project and sustain naval power further from mainland China,” he told the Senate.

Mr Shearer said that the global security environment was worsening and that attempts by Australia and its allies attempts to deter China from aggression could break out into a major conflict in the near future.

He compared the outlook to when he gave his first Senate Estimates evidence in 2021 when the pandemic was receding and China was targeting Australian industries with economic coercion through massive tariffs.

“Four years on, the pace, ambit and gravity of strategic change are if anything, even greater than we anticipated,” he said.

“The Indo-Pacific is now the epicentre of global systemic rivalry.

“Crises are overlapping and intersecting, bringing threats onshore faster, sometimes in real time.

“Some of the assumptions that underpinned international stability for decades can no longer be taken for granted.

“Most consequentially, should deterrence break down, notwithstanding the efforts of our Government and our allies, we would face a rising risk of major conflict within our region in the next decade.”

He also warned that malign states were colluding with criminals and other non-state actors to enable hacking, sabotage, assassinations and political interference.

Earlier this year, the Government expelled the Iranian Ambassador after ASIO revealed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had commissioned attacks on Jewish sites in Australia to stoke social divisions.

Mr Shearer will end his term as head of ONI later this month and next year take up his new role as ambassador to Japan.

Japan is also on the receiving end of a new bout of Chinese intimidation and coercion, after the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reacted angrily to the country’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi cautioning that any takeover of Taiwan would invoke a Japanese military response.

China has cut flights, diplomatic engagements, and some trade while warning students and tourists to avoid travelling to Japan.

It has also sent naval vessels to the Senkaku Islands, which Japan administers but China disputes.