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Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has confirmed that officials have “no sense” of where an approaching Chinese PLAN task group of warships is headed.
The Minister for Defence has confirmed that the group of People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) warships, en route from the People’s Republic of China, is transiting the Philippine Sea under heavy surveillance.
“I want to confirm that Defence is monitoring a Chinese PLAN task group which is currently in the Philippine Sea. But I also want to put this into some context. We maintain constant maritime domain awareness in our geographic areas of interest; that’s south-east Asia, north-east Asia, the north-east Indian Ocean, and the Pacific,” the Deputy PM said, speaking at the press conference at Parliament House earlier this week.
“In that context, we will routinely monitor the movements of PLAN vessels. And when there are movements such as this, we will monitor them, particularly until we know that they are not coming in the vicinity of Australia.
“And let me emphasise again that this particular task group … is currently in the Philippine Sea, and we do not have a sense of where it is going, but we continue to monitor it.
“As we monitor all movements until we know that task groups are not coming to Australia, we’re not about to give a running commentary on movements of all Chinese Navy vessels.
“Australians can be assured that we are monitoring our areas of interest and we are monitoring the movements of the Chinese Navy.”
Earlier this year, PLAN Task Group 107, comprised of a Jiangkai Class frigate Hengyang, a Renhai Class Cruiser Zunyi and a Fuchi Class replenishment vessel Weishanhu, completed a journey around Australia and successfully completed live-firing exercises off the Australian coast.
Maritime security specialist and defence analyst Jennifer Parker, a former Navy officer and expert associate at the National Security College - Australian National University, said the new taskforce movement is interesting and relevant to the Australian public.
“This is interesting because the Chinese Navy, it generally operates within what’s called the first island chain. So that’s kind of, if you drew a line from Japan down to Taiwan to the Philippines,” she said, speaking to ABC Radio earlier this week.
“So when that task group from the Chinese Navy goes outside of that first island chain, it raises eyebrows of what are they doing because they’re operating differently.
“I think it’s of course important that Defence is monitoring this capability. I think it’s also important that the Defence minister acknowledged this today because we do need to be having more of a conversation with the public about what is changing in our region.
“And one of the things that’s changing is the types of naval deployments that China is doing, as we experienced earlier this year.”
