Australia and New Zealand are looking for an explanation from China on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) for its unusual test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday.
The two island nations said they would consult with other members of the Pacific Islands forum (PIF) before the UNGA wraps up on Friday.
The PIF is an 18-member organization that includes French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, and Samoa in addition to Australia and New Zealand.
China launched an ICBM into the Pacific for the first time since 1980, in an unusually public demonstration of military power. Chinese officials blandly insisted the test-launch was a “routine arrangement in our annual training plan,” even though it was clearly nothing of the kind.
Beijing has been coy about the missile hardware it tested and its intended flight path, but the Associated Press (AP) on Thursday spotted a map published in a Chinese newspaper that showed the missile flying in a straight line from China’s Hainan Island to “the center of a ring formed by Solomon Islands, Nauru, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Western Samoa, Fiji, and Vanuatu.”
The ICBM passed within a hundred kilometers of the northern Philippines on its way to splashdown, and may have passed over Guam.
A spokesman for the New Zealand Foreign Ministry said on Thursday said his government was seeking more details about “the unwelcome and concerning development.”
“Pacific leaders have clearly articulated their expectation that we have a peaceful, stable, prosperous, and secure region. As part of the region, New Zealand strongly supports that expectation,” the spokesman said.
The Australian government said it has “sought an explanation from China” for the missile test.
“The launch comes in the context of China’s rapid military build-up, which is taking place without the transparency and reassurance that the region looks for from great powers,” said the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The Biden administration seemed far less perturbed by China’s strange missile test than Australia and New Zealand. The Pentagon on Thursday praised China for handing out warning messages before the launch.
“We did receive some advanced notification of this ICBM test and we believe that that was a good thing. It’s a step in the right direction and it does lead to preventing any misperception or miscalculation,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.
Singh hailed China’s launch warnings as a “common-sense, confidence building measure” the U.S. would like to see more of.
The Pentagon might have been effusive in praising China’s transparency because the Chinese military only recently restored bilateral communications with the United States, ending a blackout China imposed in a tantrum after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.
China took the very unusual step of publishing photographs of its ICBM launch on Thursday, using China Junhao, the media service of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
The photos revealed the missile was a DF-31AG, a vehicle capable of reaching the U.S. mainland from almost any of its known launch sites in China.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia full supports China’s “sovereign right” to test and improve its missiles. Peskov noted that China has no formal treaty obligation to share information about its missile tests in advance with the United States, but it does have such a treaty with Russia, and the “necessary exchange of information” took place in this instance.