{"id":319901,"date":"2025-12-01T04:54:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T04:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/319901\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T04:54:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T04:54:17","slug":"chinese-naval-flotilla-could-be-heading-for-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/319901\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese naval flotilla could be heading for Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australia is monitoring a Chinese flotilla that is near the Philippines but could be heading Down Under.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Defence Minister Richard Marles confirmed this afternoon that the ADF is tracking the People&#8217;s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy task force, which was first reported by the Australian Financial Review last Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>He said that, while the naval group is currently in the Philippine Sea, its destination is unknown, but could be Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/e1541cff-1a84-4584-ba8d-4d07c1c4aab0.jpeg\"   alt=\"\"\/>A different Chinese task group, including the frigate Hengyang (pictured), circumnavigated Australia early this year. (Supplied)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We do not have a sense of where it is going,&#8221; Marles said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But we continue to monitor it as we monitor all movements until we know that the task groups are not coming to Australia.\ufeff&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Marles added that it isn&#8217;t particularly unusual for the ADF to monitor a Chinese vessel. <\/p>\n<p>He said the government was not going to give a running commentary on the movements of the PLA Navy.<\/p>\n<p>\ufeff&#8221;I want to put this into some context: we maintain constant maritime domain awareness in our own geographic areas of interest,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And in that context, we will routinely monitor the movements of PLA-N vessels.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And when there are improvements such as this, we will monitor them, particularly until we know that they are not coming in the vicinity of Australia.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/82693a70-5bec-4229-a8e0-f07796d47b57.jpeg\"   alt=\"Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday 1 December 2025. \"\/>Richard Marles has insisted that Australia is adequately equipped to momitor the flotilla. (Alex Ellinghausen)<\/p>\n<p>\ufeffHowever, Marles insisted the ADF is properly equipped to monitor any ships that come close to Australia.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We absolutely had an unprecedented level of surveillance of that task group (earlier this year) by the Royal Australian Navy,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And we did do it in conjunction with our friends and allies but that saw an unprecedented level of commitment of the Royal Australian Navy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can be assured that at any point in the future, we will bring that same degree of determination and commitment to any journey that happens in our particular area.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia is monitoring a Chinese flotilla that is near the Philippines but could be heading Down Under.\u00a0 Defence&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-319901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}