Joe Biden gave us an intriguing bit of insight into China's thinking this week, recounting a conversation that had followed the announcement of the AUKUS defence technology agreement in 2021.
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"When we put together the deal, I was asked by Xi Jinping were we just trying to surround China," Biden said, standing alongside Anthony Albanese in Washington.
So Mr Xi is beginning to feel surrounded, is he?
China is an enormous, authoritarian country with a 19th-century dog-eat-dog attitude to international affairs, and it's trying to grab more territory.
Well, what else does he expect in response to aggression? China is an enormous, authoritarian country with a 19th-century dog-eat-dog attitude to international affairs, and it's trying to grab more territory.
Of course neighbours that think they have a chance to resist it - Japan and Australia first, and now South Korea and the Philippines - are adjusting their defence policies and beginning to band together.
Their great fortune is that their mighty backer, the US, is still interested in backing them.
Biden recounted another bit from what was probably the same conversation with the Chinese president. "Well, I was asked by Xi Jinping a couple of years ago why I was working so hard with your country [Australia]. And I said, 'Because we're a Pacific nation.' He looked at me, and I said, 'Yeah, we're a Pacific nation - the United States." We are, and we're going to stay that way."
The thing to notice there is Xi's presumably quizzical look at Biden. He'd have been thinking that the US should quit the Pacific - or, more exactly, the Western Pacific - and let China get on with overpowering its neighbours.
In the way it's trying to overpower the Philippines, for example. On Sunday, two Chinese ships rammed two from the Philippines that were supporting Manila's presence on a South China Sea shoal, the Philippine government says. Beijing is trying to grab that shoal.
The US State Department promptly reminded China that the Philippines was a US ally and that the alliance covered attacks on Philippine ships.
For ramming is indeed an attack. It's one of the forms of violence that China has been using against its near neighbours, and also against US and Australian forces.
Its other violent methods are directing lasers at aircraft, specifically at the eyes of crew members, dropping debris in front of aircraft to possibly disable engines, and shooting high-pressure water hoses at ships, potentially knocking people overboard and drowning them.
It also sends fighter pilots to make wildly dangerous manoeuvres near foreign military aircraft over international waters that it's trying to seize from the rest of the world.
Does Xi imagine that such behaviour, a clear warning of a possible dark future of Chinese dominance of this side of the world, wouldn't prompt defensive reaction?
Albanese's trip to Washington this week was part of the reaction. His first priority was helping to nudge along the nuclear submarine element of AUKUS.
We need the US Congress to give initial approval for us buying submarines from the US fleet next decade. We also need it to legislate so Washington can receive US$3 billion (AUD$4.8 billion) of our money to expand its industry for building replacement subs.
For the follow-on program in which Britain and Australia will jointly build submarines of British design, we need Congress to give us relief from onerous and cumbersome US restrictions on technology transfer.
To push for all that legislation, Albanese met the new speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, on Thursday.
The US Navy doesn't have enough submarines, raising doubts about whether it will oppose transferring some to us. So it was enormously helpful that the commander of the US submarine force, Vice Admiral William Houston, on Wednesday urged Congress to pass the legislation.
Still, the US Navy's attitude could easily change in the years ahead, throwing our program badly off schedule.
The US's Western Pacific allies are beginning to cooperate, instead of relating to each other mainly through Washington in a hub-and-spoke arrangement.
An announcement from Albanese's trip is an example of that. Australia and the US will together work with Japan on developing loyal wingmen aircraft - fast drones that fly with and raise the effectiveness of fighters and bombers.
Australia has much to offer in the field, thanks to Boeing's development in Queensland of such an aircraft, the Ghost Bat, and expertise in machine autonomy that BAE Systems has built up in Melbourne.
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About 10 years ago, pacifist Japan finally accepted that it would enter the international arms market, to increase production runs and reduce costs in its defence industry. Its progress has been slow, but it made a breakthrough on October 20 when our Department of Defence said it had signed an agreement with Mitsubishi Electric for development of laser systems for protection of military platforms - which probably means ships and ground vehicles.
The basic technology has been developed by the Australian government's low-profile Defence Science and Technology Group. Mitsubishi Electric is needed to get the concept into production.
Military co-operation like that is just what happens between allies. Japan and Australia don't have an alliance, but we're getting pretty close to each other.
South Korea is getting closer to Japan, too. That's thanks mainly to Seoul overcoming some of its longstanding resentment of Japan's failure to fully recognise its crimes during and before World War II.
South Korea is doing that because it is belatedly willing to stand up to the threat from China.
Back in Washington, Biden says he replied to Xi by saying: "No, we're not surrounding China."
He should have added that what's actually happening is that China is getting itself surrounded.
- Bradley Perrett was based in Beijing as a journalist from 2004 to 2020.
Bradley Perrett
Bradley Perrett is a regular ACM columnist with a focus on Australia's relationship with China, covering defence, strategy, trade, economics and domestic policy. He was based in Beijing as a journalist from 2004 to 2020.
Bradley Perrett is a regular ACM columnist with a focus on Australia's relationship with China, covering defence, strategy, trade, economics and domestic policy. He was based in Beijing as a journalist from 2004 to 2020.
