China tried to mislead foreign governments last year by playing down the importance of a nuclear-capable missile test over the Pacific Ocean, New Zealand diplomats privately warned in documents obtained by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Beijing sent shivers through the South Pacific in September last year, when its elite Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force fired a dummy warhead into the high seas near French Polynesia.
A tranche of classified government briefing notes showed deep concern within the New Zealand government in the wake of the surprise launch, which China shrugged off as “routine.”
Photo: Chinese People`s Liberation Army News and Communication Center via AFP
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 characterizing 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,” while behind the scenes, New Zealand diplomats privately decried China’s “mischaracterization.”
“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.
AFP applied to access the heavily redacted documents — written between September and October last year — under New Zealand’s Official Information Act. They were classified as “restricted,” which protects government information with diplomatic or national security implications.
China has been seeking to cement its presence in the strategically important South Pacific, showering developing island nations with new hospitals, freshly paved roads and gleaming sports stadiums. Rarely has it so obviously flexed its military might in the region, where the US, Australia and New Zealand have long been the security partners of choice.
“We have again asked China why it conducted the test at this time, and why it chose to terminate the missile test in the South Pacific,” New Zealand diplomats wrote.
The Rocket Force launched the intercontinental ballistic missile with little warning on Sept. 25 last year.
Photos released by China showed a projectile streaking into the sky from a secret location atop a billowing plume of smoke. It appeared to be one of China’s advanced Dong Feng-31 missiles, analysts said, a weapon capable of delivering a thermonuclear warhead.
The long-range missile splashed into a patch of ocean long designated a nuclear-free zone under an international treaty. Pacific island nations remain deeply scarred by the nuclear tests that shook the region in the decades following World War II.
“This is the first time that we are aware of a test of a nuclear-capable missile terminating within the zone since its establishment in 1986,” the New Zealand diplomats wrote.
China alerted the US, the UK, France, Australia and New Zealand before the test, but there was only a vague indication of what it would do, a separate batch of Australian government documents showed.
“Beijing advised us of a planned activity the evening prior to the launch, but specific details were not forthcoming,” Australian defense officials wrote in November last year.
However, Pacific island nations were not provided with advance notice of the launch, New Zealand diplomats said.
Following the launch, Japan voiced “serious concern,” Australia said the test risked “destabilizing” the South Pacific and Fiji urged “respect for our region.”
China foreign policy expert Nicholas Khoo said the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test was particularly significant because it took place in the South Pacific.
“Since 1980, China’s ICBM tests have taken place within Chinese territory,” he said.
“The test is a reminder to regional states that China is a ‘full spectrum’ power that has economic and military power. It is a peer with the US,” he said.
Harvard University researcher Zhang Hui (張會) said it was a forceful reminder of China’s nuclear strength.
“The test shows that the Rocket Force has an operational and credible nuclear force that can help ensure China’s ability to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent,” he wrote last year for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
“The rare public ICBM test seems to have been specifically aimed at dissuading Washington from using nuclear weapons in a potential conflict across the Taiwan Strait,” he said.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS