Wong presses Wang Yi on Pacific missile test

Foreign Minister Penny Wong pressed China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi over Beijing's ballistic missile test into the South Pacific when the two met on the sidelines of the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting in Manila on Tuesday evening.

Wong told Wang she expected the pair to discuss Australia's concerns, including "around peace and stability in our region, safe and professional military conduct, and the importance of transparency and reassurance of intent," according to her opening remarks reported by SBS News. She relayed the strong concerns that Pacific Island countries had raised about the launch.

China test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile into international waters earlier this month, its first such launch, and the missile is understood to have come down near Tuvalu, a Pacific nation of about 11,000 people with which Australia has a security and migration treaty. Australia, Japan and New Zealand were given a few hours' notice. Albanese called the launch a provocative act. The Solomon Islands prime minister said it was not the act of a friend.

“You've often heard me say that we will cooperate where we can and disagree where we must, and we want to continue to engage because we believe that is in our national interest," Wong told Wang, according to SBS. It is a formula she has used before to describe a relationship that swings between trade and friction.”

The meeting was the latest contact in a relationship that steadied after Beijing lifted the trade sanctions it imposed on Australian exports at the start of the decade. Canberra buys that stability while China's military reach extends into a part of the world Australia has long treated as its own neighbourhood. Tuvalu, where the missile came down, sits inside the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone.

The two ministers agreed to keep talking, with no announcement beyond that. Wong put Australia's concerns, and the Pacific's, directly to Wang. The missile test now sits on the record between the two capitals; the reach it demonstrated does not shrink because of one meeting in Manila.