Andrew Shearer,a former national security adviser to Tony Abbott and John Howard and now a senior expert at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies,said China’s whole strategy relied on “building up its power and influence in the region and getting its own way without having a military conflict”.

“The PM’s right in the sense that I read him which is that,certainly for now,China doesn’t pose a direct military threat to Australia. But,in some ways,what it presents is a much more subtle and sophisticated and difficult challenge to us,to the United States and to like-minded countries in the region,” he said.

The methods included economic coercion,cyber attacks,the use of its coastguard to support a “fishing militia”,some - though not all - of the Belt and Road initiative,and interference in the politics of other countries,including Australia.

“At the heart of the discussions between the leaders[Mr Turnbull and Mr Trump] will be a discussion about how do we maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific … and that’s a much broader discussion that just the military alliance,” Mr Shearer said.