Australia, Japan boost defense ties in face of CCP incursions
Australia and Japan are increasing joint defense exercises amid shared concerns over the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) incursions into Japanese airspace and territorial waters.
During their September 2024 summit in Queenscliff, Australia, the nations’ defense and foreign ministers discussed greater security cooperation, support for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, and unease about the CCP’s increasingly aggressive territorial claims in the South China and East China seas.
In 2025, Australia will participate for the first time in Orient Shield, the largest annual field training exercise between the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force and the United States Army.
Canberra and Tokyo also plan to involve the Japanese Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade in annual training rotations of U.S. Marines in the northern Australian city of Darwin.
The CCP’s assertive activity around Japan troubles Japanese defense officials, who are also concerned about growing cooperation between the Chinese and Russian air forces.
Japan lodged a formal protest after an incursion by a CCP military survey ship into its waters in August 2024. Tokyo also protested days earlier after a CCP military aircraft briefly entered Japan’s southwestern airspace.
“We have shared very strong concern over these incidents and, for the East China Sea and South China Sea, any attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force or by coercion, we have put forward our strong opposition,” then-Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara said.
“It really underlined our shared commitment to asserting the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific, in our neighborhood,” Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said. “The countries of the region and indeed the world want to be in a world where disputes are resolved not by power and might but by reference to international law.” The Associated Press
