Will China get away with an attack on Australian aircraft?

Whatever China does - no matter how thuggishly it behaves - it hardly suffers consequences. No wonder, then, that it keeps acting like a thug.

Be clear about what happened to an Australian P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea on May 26: it was attacked.

The crew of a Chinese J-16 fighter that intercepted the Poseidon released a weapon against it and its crew.

The weapon was unconventional - a bundle of aluminium strips, which military aircraft usually use to confuse radars - but a weapon nonetheless. It was released ahead of the Poseidon to be sucked into its engines, threatening to debilitate them.

This is a new level of aggression by China in the South China Sea.

But we are used to seeing new levels of aggression by China.

That's because, after China gets away with one kind of forceful act - say, flying fighters dangerously close to lumbering surveillance aircraft - it steps up to another - such as shining lasers at them, threatening to blind the crews.

This serves its ruthless ambition to seize control of a sea that belongs to the whole world.

Then there's China's economic behaviour, notably its industrial-scale theft of technology and its endless moves to rig trade. Except for the US in the past few years, other countries mostly shrug at this.

Take a look at Chinese verbal abuse, too. On June 1 an official media commentary directed at the United States said: "For our friends, we have fine wine; for jackals and wolves, we have shotguns."

What kind of country addresses another in such a manner?

One that gets away with it.

If other countries are willing to act as China's punching bags, China will be happy to punch them.

By using force against our aircraft, Beijing may eventually prevent us from continuing to send them over the South China Sea, which we do in part to make the point that China doesn't own it. The government will have to consider whether doing so is dangerous.

China's achieving that result shouldn't be surprising: violence works. Or at least it does when the victim is unable or unwilling to use violence in reply, which is out of the question for us.

The incident can't be put down to the personal aggression of the Chinese fighter pilot.

At times, China has indeed had a problem with hothead pilots, notably in standoffs with Japan. But a pilot is most unlikely to go as far as releasing some kind of payload - in this case, the aluminium strips, called chaff - without permission or, more likely, orders.

Nor would the effect be unknown on the Chinese side.

At the very least, an aircraft whose engines have ingested something must land promptly, undergo inspection and possibly repair. If ingestion of chaff knocks out the engines - admittedly, not likely - and the aircraft is far from land, the pilot may be forced into a crash landing on water.

So what will we do about this? What, indeed, will we do next time China acts as a thug?

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Not much alone. We need to get friends to act with us in unison, and we must be ready to support them when they need to stand up to China.

Angry words are no answer, since they do little but raise diplomatic temperature. But there are other ways.

Trade sanctions are obvious measures and hardly excessive in response to use of armed force.

Beijing would not feel trade punishment unless it were applied by the US or by several countries together. But we can at least tell our friends that they need not fear reprisals: we've coped with Chinese trade bans well enough for two years.

Action against Chinese exports can be targeted on particularly sensitive industries, such as those with high employment. The Chinese Communist Party values them for contributing to social stability and therefore its grip on power.

Then there are other things that countries can do that really get up the CCP's nose. For a start, it hates diplomatic campaigns against its oppression in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.

It would also hate clever anti-CCP information campaigns aimed at the Chinese people, who are not entirely sealed off from the outside world.

Where China is trying to obstruct some international activity or organisation, we can be inclined to take the other side. If there is something that China wants to join, especially a trade deal, we and our allies can oppose its membership.

And if there is one thing that drives the CCP nuts, it's support for Taiwan. Maybe our response to the attack on the Poseidon should be helping Taiwan militarily.

Supporting the Taiwanese armed forces with a little training would be a good start, working alongside the US and encouraging European friends to pitch in.

We can use the Chinese method of incrementalism: do a bit, push the envelope, then do a bit more. Beijing must be made to know that each step is a response to some act of roguishness.

On the same day as the attack on the Poseidon, 15 professors of China studies in Australia urged our new government in an open letter to put more emphasis on "diplomatic and economic interests", rather than "great power strategic concerns" in dealing with China.

If only we could.

By all means, let's drop the loud talk that the former government seems to have used mainly to promote its electoral prospects.

But, as for substantial concessions, all our experience tells us that trying to please China does nothing to discourage its aggression.