Shangri-La Dialogue: Australia says peace with China remains despite Yellow Sea military skirmish

Despite skirmishes, ‘vast bulk of interactions that the Chinese navy has with Australia’s are safe and professional’, Australia’s defence minister Richard Marles says

It underscores pull-and-push dynamics in newly stabilised China-Australia ties, where there is willing engagement between the two nations when friction arises

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Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:59pm, 1 Jun 2024Updated: 7:19pm, 1 Jun 2024

Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles was confident Australia had a legal right to be in the Yellow Sea, where it had an aerial confrontation with China last month, but said the incident did not detract from “peace” between the two nations.

Speaking to This Week in Asia at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday, Marles also met his Chinese counterpart, new defence chief Dong Jun, on the sidelines of the dialogue on the same day, using the meeting to speak directly about the Yellow Sea and other recent naval incidents.

Marles had a similar meeting last year with his previous counterpart, just as bilateral relations between the two nations started improving.

In the Yellow Sea last month, a Chinese fighter jet released flares in front of an Australian military helicopter that had been launched from the HMAS Hobart that was in the Yellow Sea enforcing United Nations Security Council sanctions against North Korea.

Despite the skirmish last month and a November run-in between the two nations’ navies off Japan’s coast, the “vast bulk of the interactions that the Chinese navy has with Australia’s are safe and professional”, he said to This Week in Asia.

It underscores the pull-and-push in the newly stabilised China-Australia ties, where there is willing engagement between the two nations when friction arises in shared areas such as regional seas.