‘Quiet and Subservient’: How Beijing Tested Australia—and Why One Analyst Says Canberra Faltered

Udumbara Udumbara
Jan 9, 2026 - 10:59 Updated: Jan 8, 2026 - 20:49
0
‘Quiet and Subservient’: How Beijing Tested Australia—and Why One Analyst Says Canberra Faltered

.

The Australian government is exactly where Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping wants it to be, which is to be “quiet and subservient,” according to an ominous warning from defence expert Peter Jennings.

Jennings was the Deputy Secretary for Strategy in the Defence Department (2009-12); Chief of Staff to the Minister for Defence (1996-98); and Senior Adviser for Strategic Policy to the Prime Minister (2002-03).

He warned that with Beijing likely to repeat a naval circumnavigation of Australia as it did in February last year—when it carried out an unheralded live-fire exercise—ministers now had to “summon up the courage” about the “dire strategic outlook.”
“The whole point of [last year’s exercises] is to continually probe and test not just a military response, but the political stance that the government is going to take. And we failed that test in February, badly,” Jennings said in a recent Institute for Public Affairs (IPA) discussion.

After serving as head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) for a decade, from 2012 to 2022, Jennings is now an adjunct fellow at the free market IPA.

.

Peter Jennings, Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs. Photo courtesy of the IPA.

.

Jennings claimed the Chinese Communist Party’s motivation was to be provacative and “to show the relative powerlessness of the Australian Navy in response, and we had the pretty unedifying spectacle of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the Defence Minister all really defending the Chinese position.”

At the time, when questioned about the incursion by opposition Home Affairs spokesman James Paterson, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong responded by saying, “China will be China,” but said she had told her CCP counterpart Wang Yi that “the lack of notice for PLA-N’s [People’s Liberation Army Navy] activities did not meet our expectations and was of deep concern.”

If the CCP flotilla currently near the Philippines does eventually make its way to Australian waters, Jennings says he'll be looking for “any indication of the Navy being given permission to be more aggressive in its management of [the matter].”

.

Chinese destroyer CNS Zunyi, top, frigate CNS Hengyang, middle, and replenishment ship CNS Weishanhu transit the Tasman Sea near Australia on Feb. 22, 2025. Courtesy of the Australian Defence Department.
.

He said Australian officers could stage more overflights or disrupt their electronic warfare—measures aimed at keeping the PLAN “on their toes.”

“The Philippines—which, to be frank, has a much less capable navy than the Royal Australian Navy—is up there in the fight pretty much every day, with the Chinese Coast Guard and the Chinese Navy, defending the Philippines’ sovereign territory. The Japanese do the same with their Self-Defence Force.
“What China, I think, is trying to get from Australia—and in fact, what they’re getting from Australia—is a type of subservience.
“Why doesn’t Prime Minister Albanese ring up Xi Jinping and say, ‘Hey, this is not acceptable. Please don’t do it to us.’ Why doesn’t Foreign Minister Penny Wong use her relationship with Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, to do the same thing?”

No Trade-Off for Trade

Goods and services exports to China totalled $196 billion in 2024, representing 30 percent of total export revenues and making China the country’s largest two-way trading partner.

In contrast, Australia is China’s 18th largest market. Chinese interests also have a total of $73 billion invested in Australian businesses.

Australia’s dependence on trade and investment with China is often cited by both politicians and analysts as a reason to soft-pedal in the face of provocation, but Jennings says the risk of not acting outweighs those benefits.

“It’s not about whether we can sell lobster to China. It really isn’t. Trade with China is great for as long as we’re able to do it. But none of that changes the strategic plan, which is for China to become the dominating power in our part of the world. Is that in our interests? No, it’s not.”

China recently introduced 55 percent tariffs on Australian beef imports in a move that could cost local producers $1 billion (US$667 million) a year.

Calls for US to Apply More Pressure on Defence Spending

Jennings also believes the U.S. administration needs to apply more pressure on Australia’s defence spending, which he says is less than the Hawke government during the Cold War, which was at 3 to 3.5 percent.
In June last year, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth urged Australia to increase its defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP “as soon as possible” to align more closely with the United States’ strategic objectives in the Pacific region.
However, Albanese said Australia would make its own decisions on defence spending, which currently mandates a target of 2.3 percent, while within the same period Taiwan will lift its spending to 5 percent.

Jennings says he was relieved this did not result in any significant pushback from the Trump administration.

“I didn’t want to see our prime minister embarrassed in the Oval Office, in the way that some world leaders have by being ticked off by President Trump. I was pleased that it didn’t happen, because I don’t think that would have been a good thing for the alliance. But it was also a little disappointing that the Americans didn’t stick to a harder message, which is that we need to lift our effort,” he said.

“[Defence Minister] Richard Marles, every single press conference he holds, says that this [government] is spending more in dollar terms than any previous Australian government has spent before. That’s true. [But] when inflation’s absolutely out of control, that’s not a difficult thing to achieve.”

Jennings warns Australia is currently “underperforming as an ally of the United States, Japan, and the UK.
According to ASPI analysis, government spending on defence will be $69 billion, or about 2.6 percent of GDP, in 2025/26.

Jennings argues that to gain public approval for any large dollar amount increase means the government has to “summon up the courage to talk to the Australian population in a more honest way about ... the broader strategic plan of China to become the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific, [and to] push the United States out.”

.

Read More