{"id":73704,"date":"2022-07-08T14:30:44","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T04:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=73704"},"modified":"2022-07-08T14:28:05","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T04:28:05","slug":"chinas-push-into-the-region-casts-shadow-over-long-awaited-pacific-leaders-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chinas-push-into-the-region-casts-shadow-over-long-awaited-pacific-leaders-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s push into the region casts shadow over long-awaited Pacific leaders\u2019 meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

In ordinary circumstances, the opportunity to celebrate the Pacific Islands Forum\u2019s 50-year contribution to Pacific regionalism would be expected to dominate next week\u2019s leaders\u2019 meeting in Fiji.<\/p>\n

However, had circumstances been normal, the half-century anniversary would have been feted last year. Due to two years of border closures and travel restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Suva gathering will be the first chance in three years for the PIF leaders to meet formally.<\/p>\n

Covid\u2019s impact has gone well beyond simply preventing two annual meetings. Arguably, the absence of the face-to-face meeting in 2020 contributed significantly to the breakdown in communication that precipitated the Micronesian threat to withdraw from the PIF permanently.<\/p>\n

Confirmation of the June agreement<\/a> to resolve the Micronesian dispute will be on next week\u2019s agenda. It\u2019s not expected to be problematic unless complicated by what has emerged as the meeting\u2019s most sensitive topic.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the catalyst for healing the PIF\u2019s internal rift is the issue that may open an even greater cleavage in regional coherence.<\/p>\n

In mid-February, the Micronesian leaders announced a \u2018pause<\/a>\u2019 in their denunciations of the PIF treaty, stating that progress had been made on addressing their grievances. They gave the other PIF members until June to confirm the promised reforms.<\/p>\n

Less than a fortnight later, a leaked draft<\/a> of a China \u2013 Solomon Islands security agreement has galvanised concern that this would be a not-so-thin wedge for broader Chinese security ambitions in the Pacific islands.<\/p>\n

David Panuelo, the president of the Federated States of Micronesia, sent a\u00a0three-page letter\u00a0to Solomons\u2019 Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare detailing his fear<\/a> that the agreement would embroil the Pacific in a potentially ruinous broader geopolitical power struggle that would \u2018fragment\u2019 the region.<\/p>\n

Panuelo\u2019s concerns were reinforced when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced a 10-day visit<\/a> to the Pacific islands in late May to promote two regional agreements.<\/p>\n

The first, a proposed China \u2013 Pacific island countries common development vision<\/a>, contained provisions for security and governance cooperation and outlined development aspirations. The second offered a five-year action plan to begin implementing the common vision.<\/p>\n

Beijing\u2019s initiative was surprisingly maladroit in both timing and execution. Its temporal proximity to the revelations about the Sino-Solomons agreement as well as its content suggested a desire to extend the Solomons pact to the regional level. An aura of secrecy was added because, like the Solomons pact, these regional proposals came into public view only when they were leaked to the media before the tour began.<\/p>\n

The ham-fisted diplomacy of the tour elevated regional concerns when local media were prevented from asking questions<\/a> of Wang and reports emerged that even newly won Beijing ally Kiribati had to be pressured<\/a> into allowing the visit.<\/p>\n

Again, Panuelo took the lead in denouncing the Chinese initiative by writing an eight-page letter to 21 Pacific leaders setting out the myriad risks embodied in the Chinese proposals. He also pounced on the marginalisation of the islander input through China\u2019s circulation of a \u2018predetermined joint communique<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata\u2019afa\u00a0articulated the views of many<\/a> of the leaders who met with Wang in Suva in late May that the Chinese proposals should not be considered then. The breadth of the proposals, she argued, required the views of the entire membership of the PIF, not just those states recognising Beijing.<\/p>\n

Following this rebuff, China proposed a parallel foreign ministers<\/a>\u2019 meeting alongside the PIF leaders\u2019 meeting to regain some regional initiative. In the unlikely event it\u2019s held, such a meeting would raise the dysfunctional prospect of the PIF leaders and their foreign ministers reaching different views on Beijing\u2019s regional push.<\/p>\n

Beijing has recently promulgated a proposal<\/a> to synchronise its two stalled regional agreements with its Belt and Road Initiative. Whether that tactic would strengthen acceptance of its \u2018vision\u2019 is problematic.<\/p>\n

The extraterritorial influence<\/a> claimed in the Sino-Solomons security agreement has been reasserted against one of the PIF states that will have a say in the leaders\u2019 meeting. Tuvalu was outraged when the Chinese challenged the composition<\/a> of its delegation to the UN Ocean Conference because it included three Taiwanese nationals.<\/p>\n

The traditional friends of the Pacific islands have responded with their own regional initiative to enhance their collective cooperation with PIF states. In late June, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia and New Zealand announced the establishment of Partners in the Blue Pacific<\/a>, a mechanism to more directly support the PIF\u2019s 2050 \u2018Blue Pacific\u2019 strategy for regional development.<\/p>\n

Wang wrote an op-ed in the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece the Global Times<\/em> deriding the proposal as an \u2018empty shell<\/a>\u2019, while other critics called it \u2018AUKUS plus<\/a>\u2019 or a constraint on forum sovereignty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Partially in reaction to all these developments, the PIF has decided to defer <\/a>the normal post-PIF dialogue partners\u2019 meetings to avoid direct lobbying by the non-PIF states during the leaders\u2019 meeting.<\/p>\n

Just how fully the sweeping Chinese initiatives and the various regional and extra-regional reactions will dominate the PIF leaders\u2019 discussions will depend on how willing the member states are to reach a definitive response.<\/p>\n

Thus far, the indications are that there\u2019s little appetite for weakening ties with the region\u2019s traditional friends or rewarding Beijing for its overreach in putting regional security so visibly on the table.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the leaders are likely to feel that holding Beijing\u2019s \u2018vision\u2019 at arm\u2019s length is as far as they can go for now without intensifying Chinese pressure for some stake in the regional security game.<\/p>\n

Sogavare\u2019s expressed desire<\/a> for a closer and more permanent security relationship with China on the very eve of the PIF meeting is a complicating development that tangibly reminds other members of the ties between the Sino-Solomons agreement and China\u2019s regional vision.<\/p>\n

This is the nightmare of geostrategic rivalry<\/a> that the PIF has wanted to avoid for the past five years, and now it\u2019s here with the potential for long-term adverse consequences.<\/p>\n

All this comes when Australia\u2019s new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, would prefer to be delivering his much more supportive message on climate change to an audience that has waited a decade to hear it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In ordinary circumstances, the opportunity to celebrate the Pacific Islands Forum\u2019s 50-year contribution to Pacific regionalism would be expected to dominate next week\u2019s leaders\u2019 meeting in Fiji. However, had circumstances been normal, the half-century anniversary …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":73713,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,2160,717,228],"class_list":["post-73704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-pacific-islands","tag-pacific-islands-forum","tag-solomon-islands"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nChina\u2019s push into the region casts shadow over long-awaited Pacific leaders\u2019 meeting | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chinas-push-into-the-region-casts-shadow-over-long-awaited-pacific-leaders-meeting\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China\u2019s push into the region casts shadow over long-awaited Pacific leaders\u2019 meeting | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In ordinary circumstances, the opportunity to celebrate the Pacific Islands Forum\u2019s 50-year contribution to Pacific regionalism would be expected to dominate next week\u2019s leaders\u2019 meeting in Fiji. 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