Regional security concerns over China’as warship gift to Fiji

July 17, 2018

HMAS Adelaide berthed at the Port of Suva last week.

China has donated a new “surveillance and hydrographic” vessel to Fiji’s navy at the same time as the island nation received a refitted Australian patrol boat.

The announcement reported by The Fiji Sun comes after a number of incidents where Australian navy ships have been spied on by Chinese navy ships.

China sent scientific surveillance ship Yuanwang 7 to Fiji the same day the Australian navy’s HMAS Adelaide was in Suva as part of the Indo-Pacific Endeavour exercise.

Last year, a Chinese naval intelligence-gathering ship was seen monitoring the bilateral US-Australia Exercise Talisman Sabre.

Lowy security expert Euan Graham wrote at the time that the auxiliary general intelligence Type-815 ship was positioned outside Australia’s territorial waters but within its 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone extending into the Coral Sea.

He said it was “perfectly legal” and former senior naval officer James Goldrick said it was a sign of the increasing reach of the PLA’s navy. “Such surveillance operations are part of the normal operations of all major navies and the PLA-N is rapidly becoming a major navy in every way,” Mr Goldrick wrote in the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter.

The Fiji Sun reported the new RFNS Kacau ship will join the Fiji navy’s fleet later this year.

A report earlier this year warned parliamentarians that China’s growing policing presence in the region had expanded to include training, secondments and joint operations. “Of these countries, Fiji has the closest policing relationship with China,” the Parliamentary Library paper by Cameron Hill said.

Fiji signed a police co-operation with Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security in 2011 that involves sending Fiji Police Force to China for training. This year, China gave Fiji 50 police vehicles.

The paper said Fiji’s police commissioner has requested surveillance drones from China.

The paper said while Australia “remains the leading external law and justice partner in the Pacific”, China’s regional policing relationships were “evolving”.