China will become more powerful -- but any hostile reach towards Australia will always be limited by technology and regional politics.
While China faces enormous problems – low birth rates, environmental degradation, high debt –China’s ability to project power as far as Australia is still limited.The United States went through a great depression and several recessions, two world wars, a Cold War, and several major regional wars, yet to this day it remains clearly the biggest and most powerful nation on earth.
Australia therefore faces a future unlike anything it has faced before because the leading power in our region will no longer be our ally. Just as there are limits on the economic pain China can inflict on Australia, so it is with military force. China has made enormous strides in military technology. I have been following the People’s Liberation Army’s technological progress for more than 20 years, first as an intelligence analyst and then at the Lowy Institute. Its progress has been stunning.
Moreover, it’s hard to think of circumstances in which China would devote all its key naval resources to a fight with Australia. Everywhere China looks around Asia, its ambitions are constrained by other great powers: India, Russia, Japan, and the United States.for it to ignore them as security threats in order to focus its military power on far-away Australia.
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