What do the PLAN’s live fire exercises in the Tasman Sea say about Beijing’s geopolitical intent?
The Big Ask | No. 10.2025
On 21st and 22nd February, in a show of force by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the Chinese navy, a task group made up of a frigate, destroyer and replenishment vessel, conducted live fire exercises in international waters. These occurred in the Tasman Sea, surprising Canberra and Wellington, and forcing commercial airlines to divert flights.
This is the first time the PLAN has conducted such an exercise, demonstrating Beijing’s growing blue water capabilities and capacity to project power far from its home waters. So, in this week’s Big Ask, we asked five experts: What do the PLAN’s live fire exercises in the Tasman Sea say about Beijing’s geopolitical intent?
Senior Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
This episode may be seen as a watershed event for the future. The PLAN has not only conducted live fire exercises for the first time in the Tasman Sea, but its potent surface flotilla has sailed right around Australia. While Beijing has a legal right to operate here, just as Australia’s navy operates off the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) maritime periphery, it is unusual for the PLAN to venture this far south in such force.
Beijing’s intention is partly to take the temperature of relations with Australia, shortly before its general election, and New Zealand, and to test Washington’s commitment to their security under the Trump administration.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is further demonstrating that all of Australia is of direct military interest to Beijing and within reach of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) growing combat capabilities. The PLAN can now project and sustain sufficient force to hold Australia’s maritime communications at risk, even without a base in the vicinity. Such deployments are likely to become more regular, underlining the PRC’s desire to have a security presence in the Southwest Pacific and Indian oceans.
While legal, a Chinese naval presence this far south is an unmistakably coercive signal to Canberra, which did not invite the flotilla and was not notified in advance that it was coming. If there is a silver lining, the PLAN’s circumnavigation of Australia should underline to voters here the case for increased defence spending and much faster progress on naval recapitalisation, making national security a priority issue in the forthcoming election, which must be held by May.
Expert Associate, National Security College, Australian National University
The PRC’s deployment of a three-ship naval task group to circumnavigate Australia confirms what many commentators have asserted for years: Beijing’s rapid military development isn’t solely about shifting regional power, settling disputes over Taiwan, or controlling the South China Sea – it’s about cementing its status as a global power.
From the PRC’s ‘wolf warrior’ phase to its economic coercion and cyber attacks, it’s clear the global power it aims to be is one that uses force and coercion to secure alignment with its perspectives.
Beijing’s rare deployment near Australia is part of a growing expeditionary naval capability that also includes missions in the Indian Ocean and a 2024 deployment to the US exclusive economic zone off the Alaskan coast. Although its distant naval operations are currently less frequent than those executed by other nations – such as the United States (US), Britain, France, or Australia – these far-reaching missions will become more common in the near future.
In many ways, it should be expected, given the growth in Beijing’s blue water naval capability, but this development should be interpreted as a clear sign that the PRC sees itself as a global power, backed by a powerful military.
Charles Parton
Chief Advisor, China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy
The PLAN live fire exercises were not a breach of international law, but they did cock a snook at international good manners. Civilised behaviour would have meant informing Australia’s Ministry of Defence formally, rather than putting out a ‘radio broadcast on a civil aircraft channel’; it would require far earlier notification, rather than delaying until civil aircraft were already on their journeys; and it would also have guided the PLAN to conduct the exercise elsewhere than below routes taken by civil aircraft.
However, the import of these events goes beyond boorish behaviour. It signals Beijing’s intention to become a blue water naval power in the near future, and that it is already closing in on that capability. The task force continued its journey around Australia. It may well have had submarine accompaniment.
It is hard to know if the PLAN was indulging in direct ‘punishment’ for the Royal Australian Navy’s participation in an early February joint maritime exercise with the Americans, Japanese and Philippines in the South China Sea, or for other past Australian activities there. The PLAN’s voyage will have been planned well in advance, but it may have known that America’s joint exercise was due to go ahead at that time. Nevertheless, one intention will have been to underline that if Australia (and others) stray into the South China Sea without permission, there will be retaliation. Just possibly, Australia’s protests about the dangerous dropping of flares directly in front of one of its aircraft in the South China Sea shortly before may have led to a decision not to inform of the live fire exercise through the proper channels and in proper time.
Irrespective of Beijing’s intent, the lesson is that the CCP smiles if plied with honey, but lashes out with sharp claws when its desires are not met. So do pandas.
Research Fellow on Sea Power, Council on Geostrategy
These exercises are a prime example of Beijing walking a fine line between projection and provocation. The drills were conducted in international waters, in line with international law. While the short notice given to passing air traffic is certainly discourteous, it is not illegal – although given that the exercise came just days after the 2025 Australia-China Defence Strategic Dialogue, which included discussions on military transparency and communication, the lack of either could be easily interpreted as a snub to Canberra.
More broadly, these drills fit within a pattern of the PRC’s increasing desire to project military power beyond its immediate region. The PLAN is growing from a force designed to defend its national waters to a blue water navy capable of global operations, and exercises such as these are an important step in achieving that goal. Just as other navies perform exercises and freedom of navigation operations in international waters near the PRC, so Beijing is signalling that the PLAN can now do the same. More exercises should be expected over the coming months as the PLAN continues to augment its blue water capabilities and Beijing continues to flex its maritime muscles.
Research Assistant, Defence and Security Institute, University of Western Australia and Associate Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
The live fire exercises conducted by the PLAN in the Tasman sea served as a reminder of three things: the evolved geopolitical landscape, the PRC’s naval capabilities, and Australia’s lagging defence preparedness.
The first two are intertwined. Under international law, Beijing is within its rights to conduct these exercises. Navies do it consistently, including the Royal Navy. The airliners traversing a civilian air route should have been warned earlier, and the Australian Government informed officially – an exhibition of negligence, and arguably coercion, from the PLAN. But it is not just the brazenness of the exercises which should worry; rather, it is the fact Beijing could do them in the first place, and without a base close to Australia. They are a demonstration of Beijing’s ability to enter and maintain naval force in this part of the world, naval force which could be used to blockade Australia or interdict incoming shipping. And it would be a lot easier to project such force with a base, say, in the South Pacific, where Chinese diplomacy has been gaining traction through seeking cooperation in areas such as resource extraction, but also in internal security matters and the construction of ‘dual-use’ port infrastructure. The geopolitical landscape of the Indo-Pacific looks a lot smaller to Australia now.
Of great concern too is that Australian Defence was unable to identify the exercise before they commenced – it was a Virgin Australia pilot. Again, the PRC should have provided earlier and direct warning to the Australian Government. But a nation which is facing a security challenge as acute as the PRC, a challenge which is clearly making its presence known, must have better capabilities. It is not just Europe which needs to get serious about defence.
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