Australia's defence minister Richard Marles said Beijing needs to provide greater transparency and reassurance.

Australia’s defence minister Richard Marles has called on China to explain why it needs to have “such an extraordinary military build-up”.

On Sunday morning, Marles asserted that “what we have seen from China is the single biggest increase in military capability and build up in conventional sense, by any country since the end of the Second World War”.

It is not just the size of the military build-up that concerns other countries, he told reporters.

“It’s the fact that it is happening without strategic reassurance. It’s happening without a clear strategic intent on the part of China… what we want to see is strategic transparency and strategic reassurance be provided by China, and an understanding of why it is needed to have such an extraordinary military build-up.”

  • palordrolap
    18•4 days ago

    Every government is uncomfortable. News stories about “defence” spending are commonplace.

    WWIII has already begun. The only questions now are how many will die and who will be the victors.

    I would like to be wrong. If the world can be pulled back from the brink of the existing skirmishes, then what’s happening right now won’t get the WWIII label, but we sure have a lot of hard-headed megalomaniacs running world-affecting countries these days, don’t we? That’s never a good sign.