Richard Marles says China’s military build-up is pressuring Southeast Asia

Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said in Cebu, the Philippines, on Thursday, October 29, that China’s military build-up was creating a ‘condition of pressure’ in Southeast Asia, according to AFP. Speaking alongside a meeting of Southeast Asian defence ministers, he urged allies and neighbours to work more closely together on security.

Marles described China’s conventional military build-up as the largest since the end of the Second World War. He said China had not explained why it was undertaking it, AFP reported. His assessment adds urgency to Australia’s call for cooperation among countries navigating disputes and military activity across the region.

What Marles said about defence coordination

‘Now is a time to double down on friends and to double down on neighbours and to be working more closely together to provide for our collective security,’ Marles said. He also argued that international rules matter particularly to a middle power such as Australia because they give it agency in regional affairs.

South China Sea tensions behind the warning

China deploys coast guard, navy and other vessels in disputed areas of the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost entirely, AFP reported. The Philippines, an Australian security partner, has had years of confrontations with China there. Manila said earlier this month that China’s military and coast guard presence in contested areas nearly doubled in September.

Australia also protested China’s July test of a nuclear-capable missile in the South Pacific, calling it destabilising, according to AFP. Those incidents form part of the security backdrop to Marles’s appeal, though his remarks did not identify a particular incident as the cause of the broader build-up he described.

A separate defence spending decision in India

Elsewhere in the region, India approved 2.12 trillion rupees, about $22 billion, for defence equipment modernisation on Monday, October 26, CNBC reported. Its planned purchases include long-range drones, surveillance and strike systems, counter-drone technology, air defence, artillery, helicopters and naval platforms. The decision was separate from Marles’s remarks and the four-country meeting.

CNBC reported that an Indian military official had said the previous week that confrontations with Chinese soldiers were continuing at several points along India’s northeastern border. Experts interviewed by CNBC viewed India’s planned purchases as an effort to narrow a technological gap with China, illustrating a separate security concern for another of China’s neighbours.