While the world’s attention is on Iran, China has been making its moves — buying ample time to extend its dominance in the South Pacific. The timing is not an accident.
Recently, on July 6, China launched a submarine-based ballistic missile with a dummy warhead into the Pacific Ocean during a “test” run. The test marks only a two-year gap since China’s last such launch, in 2024 — which itself came after a 44-year pause dating back to 1980, when Beijing conducted its first ballistic missile test into the Pacific. That compression, from a 44-year gap to a two-year one, is itself a signal of how quickly China’s willingness to display this capability is accelerating.
The test also landed on the same day Australia and Fiji signed a mutual defense pact, the Ocean of Peace Alliance — an agreement that, through Australia’s existing treaty relationships, indirectly involves the United States as well. The launch is concerning not just on its own terms but as a marker of an increasingly assertive Chinese military posture, one that has grown alongside a roughly 500% rise in distinct China Coast Guard vessels operating in waters near Taiwan between January 2020 and December 2025. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has separately flagged growing Chinese activity not only in the wider Pacific but also inside Australia’s own exclusive economic zone.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, called the launch “a routine arrangement for military training by the Chinese armed forces,” adding that it was “not directed at any specific country or target” and asking that “relevant countries not over-interpret” it. That is the ambiguity China has perfected: never an explicit threat, never an admission, just a demonstration timed precisely enough that everyone draws the same conclusion anyway. It is a new level of boldness and a reminder of how China uses ambiguity to pressure countries into adjusting their posture without ever looking like the aggressor. That pressure falls hardest on the Pacific island countries themselves, but it is aimed at the United States, too.
Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and New Zealand all objected. New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, noted that the missile came down inside the South Pacific’s nuclear-free zone, a treaty area explicitly meant to keep nuclear weapons testing out of the South Pacific. The U.S. response, by contrast, did not seem heavily apprehensive; the State Department called on China to “engage in meaningful arms control discussions” — a statement with no real deterrent behind it. Words without follow-through are exactly the kind of response that signals to Beijing that the indirect pressure campaign is working.
That muted response matters more because of where the world’s attention currently sits. With the war in Iran dominating headlines and consuming American diplomatic bandwidth, it’s easy to miss the other players moving in the background. China does not appear to view the Iran war as a threat to its own interests — it appears to view it as an opportunity, a chance to maneuver in Asia with less scrutiny and less risk of a coordinated response from Washington and its allies.
President Donald Trump, in both his first term and this one, has spent years pushing back against China’s ambiguity, forcing Beijing to confront the U.S. directly rather than operate in the grey zone it prefers. Iran has changed that dynamic. At his May summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, the meetings ended without any major agreements announced on the issues that mattered most. Xi made Taiwan the central topic, and Trump — asked directly whether the U.S. would defend the island in a conflict — declined to answer, at one point calling a pending $14 billion Taiwan arms package a “negotiating chip” rather than committing to it. No new commitments were signed. No firm line was drawn. That is the opening China is built to exploit.
The backdrop makes the timing even more pointed because China’s own economy is struggling. Consumer prices grew just 1% in June from a year earlier, missing forecasts and slowing for a third straight month, as a property slump and a weak labor market keep Chinese households from spending. Factory-gate prices jumped 4.1% — the fastest pace in nearly four years — but that reflects rising input costs, not domestic strength; on a monthly basis, producer prices actually fell.
AMERICA BETS ANTI-CHINA AI STRATEGY ON GOVERNMENT THAT FUNDED 421 FAKE INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS
A weaker economy does not make Beijing less assertive. It makes assertiveness more useful. Displaying nationalist resolve and military reach is far easier for China right now than fixing its debt and property markets. Beijing is well aware that the militaries of the Pacific island countries, and even Australia’s, are a relative weak point, and it is using that imbalance to pressure the security arrangements taking shape around it — exactly what the timing of the missile test against the Fiji-Australia pact suggests. Australia spends only around 2.8% of GDP on defense — a level many experts argue is far too low for the current strategic environment — while relying too heavily on the U.S. to backstop its regional commitments. With Washington’s attention absorbed elsewhere, China is in an even stronger position to pressure the Pacific island countries that Australia is trying to bring into its security network.
The U.S. needs to push back harder on Beijing’s expanding military presence, and Trump needs to draw a clear line on tests like this one. This tactic isn’t new for China — what’s new is the form it’s taking. Where Beijing once relied primarily on economic ambiguity, it is now backing that same playbook with military signaling. And without a firmer response from Washington, there is little reason to think Beijing won’t do it again.
William Nye is a Brisbane-based Australian university student and writer.