By Research Fellow Tushar Joshi
Hours after Australia and Fiji signed the most consequential defence agreement in the South Pacific in decades, a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine launched a long-range ballistic missile carrying a dummy warhead into the Pacific Ocean.
Beijing called it a routine exercise. Few in the region are likely to see it that way. At a moment when Australia is deepening security partnerships across the Pacific and India is expanding strategic relationships with like-minded Asian states, the launch reads less like a test and more like a message.
That message had already been sent once this week. Responding to the newly announced co-operation between the Indian and Japanese prime ministers on critical minerals and resilient supply chains, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun warned that “co-operation between countries should be conducive to enhancing the understanding and trust among regional countries … such co-operation should not target any third party or harm the interests of any third party, still less be used as an excuse to patch up exclusive small groupings and stoke division and confrontation.”
Days later, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi left New Delhi on a three-nation Indo-Pacific tour taking in Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, Beijing found a second opportunity to make the same point, and this time through the Pacific rather than through diplomacy alone.
The missile launch directly followed the signing of the Ocean of Peace Alliance treaty, under which Australia and Fiji introduce a mutual defence obligation, described by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as one where “there’s no higher obligation than to come to each other’s aid at a time of need”, and commit to consulting on any “security-related development that threatens the sovereignty, peace or stability” of either country.
“Three episodes, three different countries, thousands of kilometres apart, and one consistent Chinese reflex.”
Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles has already dismissed any direct link. Asked whether China had briefed Australia in advance and whether the test was retaliation for the Fiji treaty, Marles replied: “No is the answer to the last part of that question, but we were informed by China today of its intention to do this test.”
He nonetheless flagged concern about what the test signals for regional stability. The same day, without naming Australia, the Chinese Embassy in Vanuatu took aim at what analysts read as the new Australia-Vanuatu Nakamal Agreement, repeating that “co-operation should not target any third party” – language almost identical to Beijing’s response to India and Japan days earlier.
Three episodes, three different countries, thousands of kilometres apart, and one consistent Chinese reflex. Whether the trigger is critical minerals co-operation, a defence pact with Fiji, a security arrangement with Vanuatu or the deepening of Australia-India ties, Beijing’s response has settled into a pattern.
Modi in Australia
That pattern is the real story, and it’s why Modi’s visit to Australia deserves a wider lens than the bilateral one.
The formal agenda for the third Australia-India Leaders’ Summit – defence, trade, education, mobility – will be substantial in its own right, and Modi’s address to the Indian diaspora at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium will supply the familiar theatre of his overseas trips.
The more interesting question the visit raises is one that has been simmering for a while: does the Indo-Pacific still hold together as a strategic idea?
The Pentagon’s move last month to rename “Indo-Pacific Command” back to “US Pacific Command”, alongside growing pressure on allies to carry more of their own security load, has fed speculation that Washington’s appetite for the term is fading.
But the Indo-Pacific was never Washington’s idea to begin with, and its relevance was never contingent on American enthusiasm. The construct emerged from China’s own economic and military rise and the shift in the regional balance of power that came with it.
As Indian foreign policy analyst C. Raja Mohan has put it, “What Americans call that reality matters less than the fact that Beijing’s neighbours have no option but to deal with it – with or without American support”.
Its modern popularisation, in fact, came not from the US but from Japan, when Shinzo Abe told the Indian parliament in 2007 that the fates of the Indian and Pacific Oceans were inseparable, in a speech remembered as the “Confluence of the Two Seas”.
Beijing’s own behaviour over the past week, reflexively contesting every new partnership in the region, makes Abe’s argument for him.
Having said that, none of this means Australia and India are building their partnership around opposing China.
Both countries continue to trade and engage with Beijing, and neither wants confrontation: India has steadied ties since the 2020 Galwan stand-off, and Australia has restored high-level dialogue after its own difficult years.
Strategic competition and diplomatic engagement are running side by side, not cancelling each other out.
Still, neither country can ignore what’s converging around them. For Australia, the Pacific has become central to national security and regional stability. For India, the Indo-Pacific underpins secure supply chains, critical mineral diversification and the maritime balance of power.
These are not separate conversations, as critical minerals, trusted technology supply chains, maritime domain awareness, defence industrial co-operation, cybersecurity and co-ordination with Pacific partners now sit inside the same strategic equation, and the next phase of the Australia-India relationship should be built around that overlap rather than symbolic declarations.
None of it needs to be read as containment. It is what trusted partners do when they want to reduce their own vulnerabilities and protect their room to manoeuvre. If Beijing insists on reading every one of these partnerships as an act of hostility, that says more about Beijing’s own worldview than about anyone else’s intentions.
Melbourne will get the headlines this week – the new agreements, the potential trade wins, the packed stadium, reflecting diaspora diplomacy. But the audience that matters most may not be in the room at all. It’s in Beijing, and going by the events of the past week, it’s already watching closely.
This article was originally published in the Australian Financial Review. (Image: Prime Minister of India’s Photo Gallery).
