Australia keeps asking the wrong first question about China

Every significant development involving China now seems to trigger the same argument. A missile test, an investment proposal, an electric vehicle shipment, a port lease or critical mineral project quickly becomes another debate over whether concerns about China are justified, exaggerated or politically motivated. One side interprets almost every Chinese action as evidence of malign intent. The other dismisses strategic concerns as Western insecurity or an inability to accept China’s rise. Neither approach helps policymakers decide what Australia should do.

Australia’s strategic challenge isn’t determining whether China is friend or foe, nor deciding whether every Chinese action represents a threat. Governments should begin by determining what best advances Australia’s national interests.

Australia’s enduring interests include protecting sovereignty, preserving social and economic prosperity, maintaining regional stability and ensuring governments retain the freedom to make independent decisions. The next question follows naturally: can Australia continue pursuing those interests during periods of economic, political or strategic pressure? Preserving that freedom of strategic choice is the purpose of strategy.

Strategy exists because governments rarely enjoy certainty. Policymakers cannot know another state’s intentions, but they can assess capabilities, identify structural vulnerabilities and understand where dependence creates leverage. Capability doesn’t equal intent, but intent can change far more quickly than capability. Governments therefore prepare for uncertainty rather than certainty. They insure against plausible futures rather than assuming today’s political assurances will endure indefinitely.

China’s 6 July submarine-launched ballistic missile test into the Pacific illustrated the distinction. The United States regularly tests missiles in the Pacific, and serious analysis should acknowledge that fact openly. China also launched a land-based intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific in 2024. The latest launch nevertheless demonstrated a different capability: a long-range missile fired from a nuclear-powered submarine into the South Pacific. Sea-based nuclear capability complicates detection, improves survivability and changes the calculations of defence planners across the Indo-Pacific. Examining that development doesn’t presume hostile intent. It reflects the responsibility of governments to understand how evolving capability affects deterrence, strategic warning and regional stability.

The same principle applies beyond military affairs. Commentary dismissing concerns about Chinese electric vehicles often follows a familiar pattern. A vehicle is simply a vehicle, a company is simply a company, commercial activity shouldn’t automatically trigger national-security concerns and capability does not equal intent. Western governments have also behaved badly, while China has achieved extraordinary economic success. Concerns about Chinese market power supposedly reveal more about Western anxiety than genuine strategic risk.

Several of those observations are valid. Not every Chinese company operates as an instrument of state power, and Australia benefits enormously from commercial engagement with China. None of those propositions, however, answers the question confronting policymakers. Strategic analysis doesn’t presume every commercial relationship becomes a national-security problem. It identifies where concentrations of dependency could create leverage capable of constraining Australia’s choices during periods of crisis or coercion.

Strategic competition increasingly occurs through systems rather than isolated events. Whether governments assess military capability or commercial dependence, they examine industrial ecosystems, logistics networks, technology platforms, supply chains and concentrations of market power. They ask whether Australia could continue governing, trading and pursuing its national interests if access, supply or cooperation became conditional. National resilience exists for precisely that reason. Its purpose isn’t simply to withstand disruption but to preserve continuity of government, economic activity and sovereign decision-making throughout disruption.

Australia’s recent experience demonstrates why that approach matters. Beijing’s coercive trade measures against Australian exports, pandemic supply disruptions and competition over critical minerals and advanced technologies have exposed the risks associated with concentrated dependencies. Governments with very different relationships with China subsequently reassessed vulnerabilities across energy, telecommunications, manufacturing, infrastructure and logistics. Those decisions reflected practical lessons rather than abstract fears. Their objectives weren’t to eliminate risk or disengage from global markets, but to understand, prioritise and manage risks in ways that preserved national resilience and strategic choice.

Whataboutism obscures those lessons because it substitutes comparison for analysis. Discussion of Chinese conduct frequently shifts to Western interventions, colonial history or the mercurial behaviour of the current US administration. Washington’s unpredictability deserves scrutiny because US decisions directly affect Australian interests and alliance planning. It does not provide China, Russia or any other state with a free pass. Australia weakens its own decision-making whenever it excuses one government’s behaviour because another has acted similarly. Sound strategy requires governments to assess every major power according to the same principles: capability, behaviour, leverage and the implications for Australia’s national interests.

Australia should also recognise China’s extraordinary economic transformation, industrial achievement and contribution to global growth without romanticising them. Recognition should inform analysis rather than replace it. Admiration for China’s achievements cannot remove the need to assess military modernisation, economic coercion, market concentration or the strategic consequences of dependence. Equally, fear should not replace disciplined judgement. Fear exaggerates threats, while self-loathing dismisses them. Both substitute ideology for analysis.

Australia cannot control decisions made in Beijing, Washington or any other capital. It can decide whether it retains the resilience, capability and policy autonomy required to pursue its own national interests when major powers compete or apply pressure. Preserving that freedom of strategic choice, not deciding whether China is permanently friend or foe, should become the central objective of Australia’s China debate.