Defense expert on aggressive China, US-UK-Australia security pact

An increasingly aggressive and assertive China has helped form a new trilateral security partnership between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, a defense expert told CNBC.

The new partnership, announced Wednesday, aims to strengthen stability in the Indo-Pacific. The United States and the United Kingdom will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines, which will allow the Australian Navy to help counter Chinese nuclear-powered ships in the region.

The three countries played down the idea that the partnership specifically targets China.

“I can assure you that none of this would have been possible without the more aggressive and assertive policies pursued by Xi Jinping over the past five years or more,” said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic think tank. Policy Institute. CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” Thursday.

Under Xi, China militarized the South China Sea, tightened controls over Hong Kong, threatened Taiwan and Japan, as well as economically punished Australia, Jennings added.

“China is the region’s strategic problem,” he said.

“I’m sure Beijing won’t like this development, but what are they expecting? Obviously, the bigger countries in the region will look to strengthen themselves in order to face a more aggressive China, and frankly that ‘ what happened with this ad. “

Responding to the new security pact, Chinese Embassy spokesman in Washington, Liu Pengyu, told Reuters that countries “should not build exclusion blocs targeting or harming the interests of third parties. in particular, they should get rid of their Cold War mentality and ideological prejudices “.

Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst at RAND Corporation, said China could use unilateral economic sanctions in response to the new security group.

“China used this (…) China Sea against Taiwan,” Grossman told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” Thursday.

Geopolitical experts have said Taiwan is one of the most dangerous hot spots in the strategic competition between the United States and China.

Jennings said it was important to create “a strong deterrent effect” in the Indo-Pacific region so that China would conclude that “it is simply not worth pursuing a military match against Taiwan.”

Taiwan and mainland China are separated by the Taiwan Strait, which is only 160 km wide at its narrowest point. The ruling Chinese Communist Party in Beijing has never controlled Taiwan, but it claims the island is a runaway province that must one day be reunited with the mainland – by force if necessary.

China has more aggressively asserted its claims on Taiwan, and there have been numerous violations of Taiwan’s air defense zone by Chinese warplanes this year.

“Frankly, if the US, UK and Australia operate together in a more energetic type of alliance relationship… it starts to paint a picture that says to China, ‘You’re not going to walk away. shoot with an attack on Taiwan the way you managed to militarize the South China Sea, ”Jennings said.

The South China Sea is a resource-rich waterway and a vital trade shipping route through which billions of dollars in global trade would pass each year.

Beijing claims almost all of the sea and has built military outposts on man-made islands it has built in these waters. Several Asian countries, including Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, also claim parts of the South China Sea as territories.

In 2016, a Permanent Court of Arbitration tribunal dismissed China’s claim as being legally unfounded – a ruling Beijing ignored.

– CNBC’s Abigail Ng contributed to this report.