Beijing’s defence ministry on Sunday accused Canberra of “deliberately hyping up” a Chinese live-fire drill off the Australian coast, saying it was “deeply surprised and strongly dissatisfied” with the claim that it did not give enough notice.
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Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Saturday that Beijing had failed to give satisfactory reasons for what he called inadequate notice of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) live-fire exercise in international waters near Australia a day earlier.
“The notification was very short, which meant that there were planes in the air which needed to divert around the airspace,” Marles told Australia’s Nine Network, adding that the late notice was “disconcerting” for commercial aviation.
“When we do an activity of this kind, we would typically give 12 to 24 hours notice,” he said, without saying how many hours were given by the PLA.
Chinese defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said the remarks were “completely inconsistent with the facts”.
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“The training area of the Chinese naval fleet is far from the Australian coastline and is completely on the high seas,” he said.