BEIJING: China on Tuesday warned that Australia, Britain and the United States were treading a “path of error and danger” after they unveiled a nuclear-powered submarines deal.
Australia announced on Monday it would buy up to five US nuclear-powered submarines, then build a new model with US and British technology under an ambitious plan to bulk up Western muscle across the Asia-Pacific in the face of a rising China.
US President Joe Biden has stressed that Australia, which joined the alliance with Washington and London known as AUKUS 18 months ago, will not be getting nuclear weapons.
However, acquiring submarines powered by nuclear reactors puts Australia in an elite club and at the forefront of US-led efforts to push back against Chinese military expansion.
Wang Wenbin, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, said: “The latest joint statement from the US, UK and Australia demonstrates that the three countries, for the sake of their own geopolitical interests, completely disregard the concerns of the international communities and are walking further and further down the path of error and danger”.
Wang accused the three Western allies of inciting an arms race, saying the security deal was “a typical case of Cold War mentality”.
The sale of submarines “constitutes a severe nuclear proliferation risk, and violates the aims and objectives of the Non-Proliferation Treaty”, Wang said at a regular news conference in Beijing.
China to prepare for the challenge
Li Chijiang, vice president and secretary-general of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told the Global Times in a previous interview that the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine program could involve the transfer of tons of weapons-grade nuclear material, enough to manufacture nearly 100 nuclear weapons, marking the first time since the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons came into force that nuclear-weapon states will transfer a large amount of weapons-grade nuclear materials to a non-nuclear-weapon state.
The AUKUS collaboration will damage the global strategic balance and stability, encourage other countries to join the nuclear arms race, escalate geopolitical tensions and bring the Asia-Pacific region to a wrong path of confrontation and splitting-up, completely opposite to the common appeal for development and prosperity from countries in the region, Li said.
Stability for decades
Monday’s announcement came at an event at a naval base in San Diego, California, where Biden hosted Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
With a US Virginia-class nuclear submarine moored behind the trio’s podium, Biden said the United States had “safeguarded stability in the Indo-Pacific for decades” and that the submarine alliance would bolster “the prospect of peace for decades to come”.
Albanese said the deal represents the biggest single investment in Australia’s defence capability “in all of our history”.
The submarines are expected to be equipped with long-range cruise missiles, offering a potent deterrent.
Albanese predicted that the wider economic impact at home would be akin to the introduction of the automobile industry in the country after World War II. The Australian government estimates the multi-decade project will cost almost $40 billion in the first 10 years, and create an estimated 20,000 jobs.
Albanese underlined that Australia was now only the second country, after Britain, to be granted access to US naval nuclear secrets.
Three conventionally armed, nuclear-powered Virginia class vessels will be sold “over the course of the 2030s”, with the “possibility of going up to five if that is needed”, said Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
Britain and Australia will then embark on building a new model, also nuclear-powered and carrying conventional weapons, dubbed the SSN-AUKUS. This will be a British design, with US technology, and with “significant investments in all three industrial bases”, Sullivan said.
Defense spending on the rise
While Australia has ruled out deploying atomic weapons, its submarine plan marks a significant new stage in the confrontation with China, which has built a sophisticated naval fleet and turned artificial islands into offshore bases in the Pacific.
In the face of the Chinese challenge — and Russia’s invasion of pro-Western Ukraine — Britain is also moving to beef up its military capabilities, Sunak’s office said on Monday.
More than $6 billion in additional funding over the next two years will “replenish and bolster vital ammunition stocks, modernise the UK’s nuclear enterprise and fund the next phase of the AUKUS submarine programme,” Downing Street said.
Australia had previously been on track to replace its ageing fleet of diesel-powered submarines with a $66 billion package of French vessels, also conventionally powered.
The abrupt announcement by Canberra that it was backing out of that deal and entering the AUKUS project sparked a brief but unusually furious row between all three countries and their close ally France.
