‘Respect Our Region’: Pacific Leaders React to Beijing’s Missile Test

Military vehicles carry China's DF-41 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles in a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2019. GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images

Beijing’s missile test has been met with shock and concern from Pacific nation leaders, who were not informed ahead of the launch.

The intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), fired on Sept. 25, was reported to have landed in the ocean some 700 kilometres (435 miles) away from French Polynesia’s Marquesas Islands, outside its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

It is the first time Beijing has launched an ICBM into the Pacific Ocean in over four decades. It is believed to have been a Dong Feng-41, an ICBM known for its maximum range, estimated between 12,000 and 15,000 kilometres, making it China’s longest-range missile.

It can carry up to 10 independently targetable nuclear warheads (MIRVs), allowing it to strike multiple targets simultaneously with an accuracy of about 100 metres.

The missile fired in the direction of French Polynesia was carrying a mock warhead, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) said in an official statement.

France has shown little reaction, with French High Commissioner in French Polynesia, Eric Spitz, pointing out that it landed in international waters and that Beijing had notified French authorities ahead of the launch. Australia, New Zealand, and the United States had also been notified.

But French Polynesia and other small Pacific countries had been kept in the dark.

Regional Tension

Teva Rohfritsch, French Polynesia’s MP in the French Senate, described the islands’ population as “profoundly shocked” by the CCP’s missile launch.

He released the text of a letter he had sent to French President Emmanuel Macron to share his concerns and ask Paris for a “strong and clear” message.

French Polynesia's representative in the French Senate, Teva Rohfritsch. GREGORY BOISSY/AFP via Getty Images

“We are told this is a normal yearly exercise (but the previous launch dates back from the 1980s) and that international right was respected, all things of which I am not totally convinced,” he wrote.

“This cannot be left without reaction from our nation, at the highest level, for the sake of peace in our Pacific world and more particularly the French Pacific islands.”

Rohfritsch said France should “reassure our populations” that appropriate military and diplomatic resources would be deployed to “preserve peace in our region.”

The territory’s president, pro-independence Moetai Brotherson, said he would also seek clarification from both Spitz and Macron and intended to convey his concerns to Beijing’s diplomatic representative in French Polynesia.

“I will personally hand over a letter in which I express our stand with regards to this launch, as well as our disappointment on the fact that we had not been informed about this launch being directed towards our waters,” Brotherson said.

“But what this launch really points out is all this tension in the Pacific area. We all know these two superpowers are there, observing each other, gauging each other, testing each other. And we, in the middle of all this, we are like a grain of rice in the ocean,” he told local media.

Beijing’s Consul General, Lixiao Tian, told reporters the launch was part of a yearly training programme and claimed it posed no threat.

At a function later that day to mark the CCP’s 75th anniversary, he formally invited Brotherson and a delegation on a trip to China.

Fiji Takes Concerns to the UN

But Pacific leaders—increasingly feeling ignored as larger countries play out their quest for regional dominance—are no longer that easily placated.

Fiji took its concerns to the United Nations, with the country’s president, Ratu Viliame Katonivere, using a speech to call for an immediate end to the testing.

“We urge respect for our region, and call for cessation of such action under principle four of the Ocean of Peace, as was endorsed by the Pacific leaders in Tonga last month,” he said.

“Our statement reinforces the Pacific’s peaceful example to uphold international law and urge others to refrain from actions that undermine peace and security in the blue Pacific.”

New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters called the launch a “concerning development.”

“We remain in the process of gathering further information,” he said. “Pacific Leaders have clearly articulated their expectation that we have a peaceful, stable, prosperous, and secure region. As part of the region, New Zealand strongly supports that expectation.”

Rising Military Aggression

Analysts said the CCP’s rare announcement of the test was intended as a warning to the United States and its allies amid rising tensions in surrounding waters—from the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea—that intervention in a conflict in the region would involve America itself being vulnerable to attack.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Defence confirmed it had detected 23 CCP military aircraft operating near its territory on the same day as the missile test. It said Beijing had recently conducted intensive missile firing and other military drills near the self-ruled island.

Over the past weeks, Japan has strongly protested incursions by Chinese and Russian military aircraft into its airspace.

Chinese and Philippine vessels have also engaged in multiple collisions near Sabina Shoal.

According to the Pentagon’s annual assessment of China’s military capabilities, the CCP had more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of 2023 and will probably have over 1,000 by 2030.