Australian prime minister slams China over aerial confrontation above tense Yellow Sea

SEOUL, South Korea — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Chinese military behavior “unacceptable” after a Chinese jet dropped flares in the path of an Australian helicopter.

While much interest has been focused on clashes in the South China Sea, the confrontation took place over the Yellow Sea off the coast of North Korea. Major deployments of Chinese and U.S. troops are arrayed on, respectively, the sea’s western and eastern shores.

Mr. Albanese is the second regional leader to call out Beijing in two days. On Monday, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. criticized Chinese Coast Guard ships after they trained water cannons on a Philippine vessel at a disputed site in the South China Sea.

Mr. Albanese, in a televised statement, said, “This issue, we have made public in order to be able to speak out very clearly and unequivocally that this behavior is unacceptable,” adding his government had made “very strong representations at every level to China,” he added.

A Chinese J-10 jet dropped flares above and several hundred yards ahead of an Australian Sea Hawk helicopter flying over international waters in the Yellow Sea on Saturday. The helicopter was part of a mission helping to enforce international sanctions against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said Monday evening.

The helicopter dodged the flares, but the confrontation put the aircraft and those on board at risk, Canberra stated. 

The Australian helicopter harassed by China was “in international waters, international airspace, and they’re doing work to ensure that the sanctions that the world has imposed through the United Nations on North Korea, due to their in-transient and reckless behavior, are enforced,” Mr. Albanese said.

The Australian prime minister, who took office in 2022, has sought to upgrade relations with China, which had frayed under his conservative predecessor, Scott Morrison. In November, however, Mr. Albanese’s government protested after a Chinese vessel turned on its sonar when a nearby Australian destroyer had divers down in the South China Sea, most of which is claimed by China. Sonar can injure divers; the incident has been characterized as a “sonar attack.”

China offered a very different version of events, contending Tuesday that the Australian helicopter was attempting to “surveil” Chinese vessels in the region and interfered with a Chinese naval training drill that was underway.

Australia “calls black white and lays the blame on someone else,” China’s Defense Ministry spokesman Zhang Xiaogang told reporters in Beijing.

Yellow Sea tensions

The aerial confrontation involves a number of geopolitical issues, including the Yellow Sea. The sea lies between China’s eastern seaboard and the Korean Peninsula.

Key naval bases and naval shipyards sit on the Chinese eastern coast, including the Yilu Naval Base, home to China’s first aircraft carrier strike group, and the Jianggezhuang Naval Base, which includes tunnels for nuclear submarines. Both are set around the port of Qingdao — itself home base to China’s North Sea Fleet. Shanghai, further down the Yellow Sea coast, is home to two more naval shipyards.

Facing them on the eastern coast of the Yellow Sea is the biggest conglomeration of U.S. troops in Korea, deployed on a string of bases down South Korea’s west coast, including Camp Humphreys, the largest American base outside the continental U.S., set outside the South Korean naval base of Pyeongtaek.

Another South Korean naval base — which has hosted U.S. assets — sits on the island of Jeju, at the southern entrance to the Yellow Sea.

While China seeks to extend its influence by claiming distant islands and reefs in the South China Sea and East China Sea, the Yellow Sea is much closer to home for Beijing.

U.S.-led strategic initiatives across the East Asian theater are another issue.

The Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI, is a U.S.-led multinational effort to monitor and interdict traffic in weapons of mass destruction. According to the State Department, some 112 countries have endorsed the PSI. 

In the Indo-Pacific, much PSI activity revolves around isolated, nuclear-armed North Korea, with naval assets from nations including Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, South Korea and the U.S. patrolling the nearby waterways.

The situation around North Korean arms exports has escalated dramatically since last year, when Russia — defying U.N. Security Council sanctions — began acquiring North Korean arms and munitions for use in its war in Ukraine. Nampo, the port serving the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, is also on the Yellow Sea.