Talisman Sabre: Chinese spy ships off Australia is the ‘new normal’

China has sent two spy ships off Queensland’s coast.

The Chinese Navy is set for a large build up in its warship strength.

Royal Australian Navy destroyer HMAS Brisbane is training alongside warships from Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States in the Eastern Australia Exercise Area as part of Exercise Pacific Vanguard.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton says he is “surprised” China has sent two surveillance ships to monitor war-games on Queensland’s coast.

Beijing has – for the first time – sent two large, modern surveillance ships to watch its every move.

Former Royal Australian Navy rear admiral and ANU adjunct professor James Goldrick told News Corp that Australia must recognise this as the “new normal”.

And, for the first time, South Korea has sent a warship.

What it takes for diverse allies such as Japan, South Korea and Australia to work together is what the Chinese spy ships will be examining.

“You have sophisticated, substantial naval forces,” Goldrick says.

If you genuinely want to conduct a practical intelligence-gathering operation on all that, even two of these big Chinese ships will be flat out trying to take it all in.”.

Surveillance ships are a perfectly normal part of international relations.

But Goldrick says we should expect much more of the same.

In his time on exchange service with the British Royal Navy, Goldrick says Soviet vessels would monitor most significant missions and exercises.

Goldrick says his experience with Soviet spy ships in the 1980s was good-natured and professional “because everybody knew what the rules were”.

Goldrick says one complication is Beijing’s “siege mentality” – an attitude shaped by the way China’s coastline is walled off by chains of islands.

These produce narrow choke points that can deny access – either in or out – of the East and South China Seas.

“For the first time in their history, they’re not just a maritime power,” he says.

“It is unreasonable to exaggerate the legal presence of the Chinese ships as threats when Western countries like the US are frequently conducting close-in reconnaissance activities on China from both sea and air, which are much riskier,” the state-controlled Global Times quoted an unnamed military expert as saying this weekend

But that is in itself an admission of the old-new normal, Goldrick says

“This is recognition of the fact that China clearly understands that military intelligence operations are acceptable in other people’s Exclusive Economic Zones,” he says

“More and more of these intelligence ships are becoming available to Beijing,” he says