China’s army-navy Jiangkai-class frigate Hengyang travels in the Torres Strait off Australia's coast, on Feb. 11, 2025. (Australian Defense Force via AP)
SYDNEY — Commercial flights were diverted between Australia and New Zealand on Friday, officials and airlines said, amid fears that Chinese naval vessels were conducting live-fire military drills in an incident some security experts called a “show of force” unusually far from China’s shores.
The Chinese naval exercises, in international waters off Australia’s eastern coast, are legal, but they nonetheless sparked expressions of alarm from officials in Australia and New Zealand.
“It’s a wake-up call,” New Zealand Defense Minister Judith Collins said in an interview with Radio New Zealand’s “Morning Report” on Thursday. She said the Chinese exercises were legal but “unusual” and involved “the most significant and sophisticated [vessels] that we have seen this far south.”
Chinese warships were approximately 81 to 93 miles off the coast of Sydney in the Tasman Sea, she said.
The Chinese exercises also are occurring during a visit to Australia by the top U.S. commander in the region, who recently criticized China and its increasingly “sophisticated” naval exercises in the Pacific.
On Thursday, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said his nation had been surveilling the three Chinese military vessels since they approached Australia’s northeastern coast roughly a week earlier.
“They have been abiding by international law,” he said. “But there is no doubt that this is, not unprecedented, but an unusual event.”
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong confirmed the diversion of some flights in the Tasman Sea between her country and New Zealand, telling the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that doing so was “normal practice where a task group is engaging in exercises.”
Wong said she believed the Chinese ships were conducting live-fire exercises which, though legal, had not been communicated to Australian officials far enough in advance.
“We will be discussing this with the Chinese, and we already have at official level in relation to the notice given and the transparency provided in relation to these exercises, particularly the live-fire exercises,” she said.
Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said at a regular briefing Friday that the Chinese exercises were “carried out in a safe, standard, professional manner in accordance with international law and international practice.”
The Chinese naval exercises come after another recent incident in international waters, when a Chinese fighter jet released flares in front of an Australian military plane in the South China Sea on Feb. 11, drawing a sharp rebuke from Canberra.
Beijing accused the Australian plane of provoking that incident.
The Chinese naval exercises in the Tasman Sea were a “show of force,” said Peter J. Dean, director of foreign policy and defense at the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney.
The Chinese are simply doing what Australia or the United States often do by conducting exercises in international waters, he said. But unlike those nations, China does not have a history of using its navy to maintain international peace and order in the region.
“The difference here is that this is new for the Chinese,” Dean said. “They are demonstrating their capabilities, and they are heading farther south than they ever have done.”
Unlike the South China Sea or East China Sea, where the United States and its allies sometimes conduct exercises, the Tasman Sea isn’t a major global maritime route.
“It’s about sending a message,” he said. “They are demonstrating to Australia that they have the ability to operate nearer to our waters, and that does send a message about how capable they are and the things they can do if a conflict ever kicks off.”
Like the incident earlier this month in the South China Sea, in which Chinese fighter jets were accused of firing flares within 100 feet of an Australian P-8 reconnaissance plane, the reports that China gave little or no notice this week for a live-fire exercise in the Tasman Sea reflected China’s aggressive and expanding activities in the region, said Charles Edel, a senior adviser and the inaugural Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“This is part of a pattern of unsafe, unprofessional chest-beating,” he said, noting reports that commercial flights between Australia and New Zealand had been diverted with no prior notice. “This is in line with the ongoing and in some ways increasing Chinese efforts to flex their muscles farther south in a display of force to Australia and New Zealand.”
Dean praised the “measured response” of Australia’s center-left Labor Party government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Diplomatic relations between Australia and its biggest trade partner ground to a halt in 2020 when Beijing launched a trade war against Canberra.
Relations have improved in the past two years under Albanese. But both his government and its conservative predecessor have expressed increasing alarm over Chinese military aggression in the region, leading Canberra to deepen its military ties to the United States, including a plan to obtain nuclear-propelled submarines as part of the AUKUS defense pact with the United States and the United Kingdom.
Australia’s conservative opposition criticized the government’s handling of the events, which come a few months ahead of a federal election.
In a statement on Friday, Andrew Hastie, shadow defense minister for the opposition, accused the government of “weakness” toward China.
The incident is unlikely to be the last, Dean said, as China’s navy — and its naval ambitions in the region — grow.
“This is something the Australian public should get used to,” he said.
Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report.
