{"id":73832,"date":"2022-07-14T14:28:27","date_gmt":"2022-07-14T04:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=73832"},"modified":"2022-07-16T07:51:25","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T21:51:25","slug":"china-in-the-south-pacific-splintering-regionalism-and-strategic-gains-through-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/china-in-the-south-pacific-splintering-regionalism-and-strategic-gains-through-economics\/","title":{"rendered":"China in the South Pacific: splintering regionalism and strategic gains through economics"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Beijing is moving at high speed to co-opt South Pacific states economically and then use that leverage to achieve broader goals, including the ability to project military power across the Indo-Pacific. China is also working to undercut Pacific regionalism and obtain advantage from its bilateral engagement with individual Pacific states, with obvious successes in Solomon Islands, while Manasseh Sogavare remains prime minister, and now with Kiribati<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The swiftness of Beijing\u2019s actions is obscured by both the pandemic and the focus of policymakers and analysts on the global implications of Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s war in Ukraine. It would be nice to be able to take comfort in the obvious personal priority that Australia\u2019s new government, notably Prime Minister Anthony Albanese<\/a> and Foreign Minister Penny Wong,<\/a> is putting on engagement with the South Pacific, but developments in the region and between China and individual Pacific states create doubt about what can be achieved from the face-to-face diplomacy and the policy approaches outlined so far.<\/p>\n

Australia and like-minded partners are moving to enhance their cooperation with Pacific states. However, it seems likely that China\u2019s economic and cash-based engagement will continue exploiting a large seam that our engagement is leaving largely unaddressed.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because we continue to prioritise decades-long approaches focused on aid, capacity-building and defence cooperation, now with the additional, welcome, priority of cooperation on climate change action. These priorities respond to stated needs of Pacific states, but they will probably do little to change the region\u2019s status as the most aid-dependent<\/a> area on the planet.<\/p>\n

And aid-dependent small states are inherently vulnerable to the economic largesse of the Chinese state and its closely aligned corporate actors\u2014banks and companies. We\u2019re seeing this pattern in Kiribati\u2019s engagement with China and, even more obviously with Sogavare\u2019s embrace of Beijing and simultaneous distancing<\/a> from Australia.<\/p>\n

Australia, the US, New Zealand, Japan and Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) members and dialogue partners seek to support the forum\u2019s vision of regionalism<\/a> because of the values inherent in \u2018a common sense of identity and purpose, leading progressively to the sharing of institutions, resources, and markets\u2019.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s an important other aspect to effective regional cooperation, which is for the PIF to act as a shield for the region to resist Chinese co-option that will undercut the security of Pacific states\u2014and of Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Effective regionalism benefits each Pacific state and the whole region. Splintering of regionalism benefits China and allows it to use the same methods of interaction that are damaging in other regions. Europe is the most obvious example.<\/p>\n

Beijing has a track record of forming its own Sino-centred forums for engagement and avoiding working closely with multilateral and regional groupings. This allows it to use its weight and scale with individual nations in direct interaction and to avoid confronting the combined weight that regional bodies like the EU or the PIF can bring to bear.<\/p>\n

The underlying behaviour of Chinese Communist Party officials and leaders is captured by the infamously frank statement of China\u2019s then foreign minister Yang Jiechi in 2010 when, faced with differences between Southeast Asian states and China, he told ASEAN representatives: \u2018China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that\u2019s just a fact.\u2019 February\u2019s joint statement<\/a> by Xi Jinping and Putin just weeks before Putin began his war in Europe is a reminder that this way of thinking and operating\u2014where scale and raw power are used to determine outcomes, not respect for sovereignty of nations large and small\u2014is how Xi is pushing his party and individuals like China\u2019s current foreign minister Wang Yi to operate.<\/p>\n

In 2012, European states welcomed China\u2019s 16+1<\/a> forum, officially called the Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries, as a way of collaborating economically, seeing it as complementary to EU activities and simply about obtaining direct benefits without the interface of the EU. When Greece joined in 2019, after pushing its role in Xi\u2019s signature Belt and Road Initiative, the grouping expanded to 17 European states engaging with Beijing (the 17+1 forum).<\/p>\n

Since then, things have changed. Most obviously, Lithuania withdrew in 2021, calling on others to do the same. Lithuania\u2019s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said<\/a>: \u2018From our perspective, it is high time for the EU to move from a dividing 16+1 format to a more uniting and therefore much more efficient 27+1. The EU is strongest when all 27 member states act together along with EU institutions.\u2019 There\u2019s a direct lesson in this for Pacific states, which smaller European states with histories of dealing with the two big autocratic powers in Moscow and Beijing can help Pacific states to learn without the painful, belated discoveries happening in Europe.<\/p>\n

The idea that the EU is strongest when all EU states act together through EU institutions is obviously true\u2014perhaps even more true\u2014for the Pacific. The PIF magnifies the weight and influence of each member state and gives the region more agency and authority when dealing with even the largest powers. This sense of common purpose has been obvious in how PIF members have worked to change international policies on climate change, for example. They have achieved much more together than each could have done alone. Arguably, the strong Pacific voices on this issue helped enable the Australian policy change we are now witnessing.<\/p>\n

The PIF leaders and their democratically aligned dialogue partners must bring this same cohesion and sense of common purpose to bear in dealing with the uncomfortable truth that, right now, the South Pacific is a key place on the map that Beijing has identified as providing real, rapid opportunities to achieve long-desired strategic gains.<\/p>\n

So far, though, on China the Pacific is moving in the opposite direction to Central Europe. Just this week, Kiribati\u2019s government announced that it\u2019s leaving the PIF while signalling a growing appetite to engage directly with Beijing. For all the denials<\/a> of anything other than benign and normal international relations, this centres on expanding China\u2019s ability to project military power unconstrained by US and allied power.<\/p>\n

The Pacific is again a central place for active and direct strategic competition, and denying that or pretending otherwise will only advantage Beijing and leave Pacific states\u2014and their people\u2014victims of insecurity and tension.<\/p>\n

Dealing with this must be the role and responsibility of the Pacific states themselves, but Australia and its partners must acknowledge that our current policies will continue to fail to reverse the momentum of Beijing\u2019s moves in the region.<\/p>\n

For Australia, this starts with not rewarding China\u2019s government for simply meeting<\/a> with Australian counterparts by agreeing to \u2018shelve differences<\/a>\u2019 as Beijing acts against our strategic and national security interests in the South China Sea<\/a>, in its partnership with Moscow and now in direct security moves in our near region.<\/p>\n

Our differences with Beijing are stark and growing\u2014as other governments<\/a> and organisations<\/a> are also now finding\u2014and focusing only on the positives is a path to disarray and disadvantage.<\/p>\n

China is not making the gains it is with Sogavare, and now with Kiribati\u2019s president Taneti Maamau<\/a>, because of its positive work with the Pacific on climate change. It\u2019s making its strategic gains from economic engagement\u2014and cash splashes<\/a> for elites who help achieve Beijing\u2019s goals. Beijing is also rewarding<\/a> those who act against regional interests and pursue short-term transactional and political benefit.<\/p>\n

Without a much larger, more ambitious strategy for the South Pacific that has an economic and workforce focus and marks a radical shift from our decades of failed capacity-building and aid, we will be bystanders as Beijing\u2019s direct reach and presence grow. Cutting aid is obviously a bad idea, but that doesn\u2019t mean that simply expanding aid is the path to success.<\/p>\n

The good news is that the real advantage Australia and New Zealand have is economic. The working model for what a prosperous and stable region looks like can be found in the wildly successful Australia \u2013 New Zealand Closer Economic Relations<\/a> framework and visa-free travel<\/a> for work. This opens economies and employment markets between Australia and New Zealand and, if extended to small Pacific states, would turn aid-dependent places into joint contributors to successful economic regionalism, addressing the needs of South Pacific workers for meaningful employment while simultaneously filling growing workforce gaps<\/a> in Australia\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

Another advantage Australia and its partners have in the South Pacific is the fact that we\u2019re democracies and so can engage not just with counterpart governments, but with democratic opposition figures and voices and non-government institutions, and at people-to-people levels. This will also require a shift in government thinking in Canberra to make meetings with opposition figures\u2014like Matthew Wale<\/a> in Solomon Islands and Tessie Lambourne<\/a> in Kiribati\u2014a normal part of relations. Engaging beyond the government of the day is routine in other relationships, like the Australia\u2013UK partnership and the Australia\u2013US alliance, for example.<\/p>\n

As the realisation dawns on the new Australian government, and on the governments and institutions in Tokyo, Washington, Paris and Brussels, that opening embassies<\/a>, expanding aid programs, having greater ambition on climate change and doing small-scale but valuable work on ocean management and illegal fishing<\/a> isn\u2019t reversing China\u2019s strategic momentum, things will have to change.<\/p>\n

Australia and New Zealand, working closely with partners, must move towards a bigger way of thinking and acting centred on economics and democracy. And, as we see with the splintering of the PIF and bilateral moves from Beijing with small-state leaders, time is not our friend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beijing is moving at high speed to co-opt South Pacific states economically and then use that leverage to achieve broader goals, including the ability to project military power across the Indo-Pacific. China is also working …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":766,"featured_media":73837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[416,52,294,717,142],"class_list":["post-73832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-government","tag-china","tag-diplomacy","tag-pacific-islands-forum","tag-regional-security"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nChina in the South Pacific: splintering regionalism and strategic gains through economics | 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\/china-in-the-south-pacific-splintering-regionalism-and-strategic-gains-through-economics\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China in the South Pacific: splintering regionalism and strategic gains through economics | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Beijing is moving at high speed to co-opt South Pacific states economically and then use that leverage to achieve broader goals, including the ability to project military power across the Indo-Pacific. 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