Australia’s efforts to protect its sea trade routes, including through the South China Sea, are increasingly dangerous as Beijing undertakes the “biggest military buildup in the world today,” Australia’s defense chief said in November 2025.
Open sea lanes, including in the East China and South China seas, are central to Australia’s national interest, Defence Minister Richard Marles said at a Royal Australian Navy conference in Sydney.
“That work is challenging and in truth it is becoming increasingly risky. The biggest military buildup in the world today is China,” he said. “That it is happening without strategic reassurance means that for Australia and so many countries a response is demanded.”
Marles said Australia is increasing defense spending to build a “more capable, lethal, long-range Navy.” That includes acquiring frigates from Japan, developing submarine drones with United States-based partners and expanding Australia’s naval shipyards facing the Indian Ocean.
Australia protested to Beijing in October 2025 after a People’s Liberation Army fighter jet dropped flares near an Australian maritime patrol plane conducting routine surveillance in the South China Sea, the latest in a series of such incidents that Australia has called “unsafe and unprofessional.”
Australia and its Allies and Partners say China’s aggressive moves invite miscalculations that could lead to an armed clash.
China claims most of the resource-rich South China Sea despite an international tribunal’s 2016 determination that Beijing has no legal basis for such sovereignty assertions.
Dozens of navy and coast guard chiefs, including from Japan, the Pacific Islands, the Philippines, Singapore and the U.S. attended the conference in Sydney, which came as Australia prepares to build a nuclear-powered submarine fleet with the United Kingdom and the U.S. through their AUKUS partnership.
The conventionally armed submarines will enhance deterrence and promote Indo-Pacific stability, officials say. AUKUS will provide Australia with “the single biggest increase in our military capability since the establishment of the Navy more than a century ago,” Marles said.
About the Author
