Australia, explained.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to media during a press conference at BAE Systems Australia on 24 August 2026 in Perth, Australia (Matt Jelonek/Getty Images)
The PM’s frankness was welcome, but what he means – and how he will respond – is far from settled.
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The trouble with Albanese calling China a hegemonThe trouble with Albanese calling China a hegemon
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s comments to the New York Times (Opens in new window) in July that China seeks “hegemony in the longer term” constitute arguably the first time a serving Australian prime minister has been so upfront about China’s ultimate strategic ambition.
They provoked a debate (Opens in new window) in these pages.
But what was unclear at the time was whether Albanese was talking about global or regional hegemony.
His frankness is welcome: the lack of clarity is problematic. We need to know what the prime minister really means by “hegemon”.
If not, then all nations, and not just China, will place their own interpretations on the remark. Japanese leaders talk openly about Chinese “coercion” (Opens in new window) but have not talked explicitly about China seeking “hegemony”. Nor is it a concept that has settled into the political lexicon of other regional leaders.
If one accepts the Cambridge definition of regional hegemon (Opens in new window), namely “a leader, country, or group that is very strong and powerful and therefore able to control others”, then that is almost certainly China’s long-term objective.
And that is probably a reasonable interpretation of Albanese’s position, especially given all the visible elements to Australia of contemporary Chinese strategic policy and power projection.
It signals his belief that China is on an unstoppable path to regional hegemony: a point that Australia will not only have to live with but devise policies for.
But it suggests Albanese has taken his approach to China well along the track from the question of whether Australia will help to defend Taiwan. It signals his belief that China is on an unstoppable path to regional hegemony: a point that Australia will not only have to live with but devise policies for.
It also runs the risk of implying Albanese believes Washington has neither the capacity nor will to stop it. To be sure, overtaking the United States is a race the Chinese may not win. China also scores a lot of own goals through its aggressive rhetoric and behaviour, among other impediments in its legal and political systems, as Australia’s former ambassador to China Graham Fletcher has recently pointed out. (Opens in new window)
Some in the Washington establishment do want to arrest China’s progress. Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby insists on the United States maintaining the integrity of the First Island Chain (Opens in new window). Pentagon officials last year privately stressed to Australian journalists and think tankers that in Washington there was no longer grand talk of a “single global theatre of operations” but rather a more targeted “single global theatre of consequence”.
But there is little sign that President Donald Trump shares that ambition. A combination of the Iran and Ukraine wars, Trump’s treatment of US arms procurement (Opens in new window), and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s questionable handling (Opens in new window) of the US armed forces has, at least for appearance’s sake, hampered the capacity for the United States to militarily stop China becoming the regional hegemon.
The question then arises as to the kind of timeframe for what Albanese was talking about in terms of when China reaches that status. That depends mostly on how patient China’s President Xi Jinping is prepared to be. But the equation probably relies more on US domestic politics than China at this point. Making predictions into the 2030s – or even 2028 in the case of former prime minister Kevin Rudd (Opens in new window) – is hardly bold: especially when we do not know what might follow the 2028 US presidential elections.
A ceremony for newly recruited soldiers on 15 September 2026 in Taiyuan, China (Wei Liang via Getty Images)
Over time Australia may have to do the hard thinking – the hardest, indeed of its modern history – about what it can accept in terms of China’s role in Asia. As a first step, Canberra should intensify existing talks with the region about what the contours of future regional stability look like.
It would be unwise to call it “hegemony” but rather something akin to joint leadership of the region. Australia has certain, even if unsteady, form in this already: its support for the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was in its own way a tacit acknowledgement that growing Chinese power was bringing with it new institutional structures in Asia.
Talking with Washington will be just as hard, for much of this depends on whether the US goes willingly from its current position of regional hegemon. Some analysts like Hugh White suggest (Opens in new window) that China can already project force against the US from inside the First Island Chain.
And even if the United States leaves disgruntled this would not necessarily be disastrous for Australia.
But if Washington goes unwillingly and Australia’s acceptance of Chinese hegemony enrages the US, then Canberra will have to face the consequences and possibly US reprisals.
There is no question but that Australia is now caught between the two major powers in a way that makes the Howard era of emphasising not having to choose look like a quiet Sunday picnic. Those policies turned what was a “normal” relationship with the US up to the mid-1990s into a hoped-for “forever partner (Opens in new window)”, in the words of former prime minister Scott Morrison.
Perhaps by using the word “hegemon” Albanese is stating that he sees China fundamentally as a challenger to the US, and who, by challenging it, is a threat to Australia.
That demands Australia support a US blocking of that ambition. If that is the case, and it looks like it, then Australia is virtually proposing to deny China’s ambitions. The irony, of course, is that Canberra could at present offer only a niche military contribution to do so. It is not clear by what other means Australia could contribute.
This is a dangerous policy because China is edging closer to being the regional hegemon. The leaps and bounds it is making in technology competition, alongside its rising military power and industrial strength, mean that it may not be long until Beijing does threaten seriously Washington’s leading position in Asia. This is what Australia should be thinking about.
About the author
James Curran
James Curran is Professor of Modern History at Sydney University and the author of Grand Ambition: Paul Keating’s Global Vision for Australia (Opens in new window).
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