cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/3174025
Beijing sent shivers through the South Pacific in September 2024, when its elite Rocket Force fired a dummy warhead into the high seas near French Polynesia.
A tranche of classified government briefing notes obtained by AFP shows deep concern within the New Zealand government in the wake of the surprise launch, which China shrugged off as “routine”.
It was China’s first long-range missile launch over international waters in more than 40 years, the papers confirmed, serving as a blunt reminder of Beijing’s potent nuclear-strike capabilities.
“We are concerned that China is characterising this as a ‘routine test’,” senior diplomats wrote in a memo to New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister.
"It is not routine: China has not conducted this type of long-range missile test in over 40 years.
“We do not want to see this test repeated.”
China’s military played down the test as a “legitimate and routine arrangement for military training”.
Behind the scenes, New Zealand diplomats privately decried China’s “mischaracterisation”.
“As this is the first time that China has undertaken such an action in the Pacific in several decades, it is a significant and concerning development,” they wrote in one of the briefing documents.
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China alerted the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Australia and New Zealand before the test.
But there was only a vague indication of what it would do, according to a separate batch of Australian government documents obtained by AFP.
“Beijing advised us of a planned activity the evening prior to the launch, but specific details were not forthcoming,” Australian defence officials wrote in November last year.
Pacific island nations, however, were not provided with advance notice of the launch, New Zealand diplomats noted.
Following the launch, Japan publicly voiced “serious concern”, Australia said the test risked “destabilising” the South Pacific, and Fiji urged “respect for our region”.
Pacific nation Kiribati, one of China’s warmest friends in the region, said the South Pacific Ocean should not be a proving ground for jostling big powers.
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