China in the Pacific: A Threat?
Over the past two decades, China has widened and deepened its economic and diplomatic footprint in the Pacific Island Countries (PICs). This unprecedented Chinese power posturing in the Blue Pacific region has caused trepidation in the corridors of power in Washington, Canberra, Wellington and Tokyo. The Chinese expansionist and threatening manoeuvring in the region, has particularly alarmed the US, which is why the latter is making a strong comeback to the ‘neglected region’. During his visit to Australia, the US Navy Admiral Philip Davidson, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command stated that the US ‘was all in’ to counter China’s expansionism in the Blue Pacific, citing Beijing’s “excessive territorial claims, debt-trap diplomacy, violations of international agreements, theft of international property, military intimidation and outright corruption.â€
Over the past years, China has appropriated over US$6 billion to social development focused more specifically on roads, ports and other major infrastructure projects connected to its ambitious grand Belt and Road Initiative. China has also provided easy-to-get concessional loans to the aid dependent island nations. Hence, foreign aid and foreign direct investment have been the bedrock of Chinese soft power and major facilitators to the steady expansion of Chinese diplomatic and economic engagement in the geographically isolated and sea-locked region. As a result, China has emerged as one of the biggest bilateral donors to most PICs surpassing traditional donors such as Australia, US, Japan and the European Union (EU). It is due in large part to these expansionist Chinese activities that analysts believe the regional balance of power is tilting overwhelmingly in favour of Beijing.
Furthermore, the first defining factor behind Chinese heavy-handed involvement in the region is Taiwan’s diplomatic presence, which has diplomatic relations with four countries with the rest (10) recognize ‘One China Policy’. Beijing considers Taiwan as its renegade province, and wishes to annex it back to the mainland either through political and diplomatic pressures or even use of military force, should Taipei choose to unilaterally declare independence. To curtail Taiwan’s diplomatic recognition and tighten its global space, China has been giving colossal sums of soft loans to the island nations to coax them to adhere to One China Policy. So far, Beijing has been exceptionally successful in derailing Taipei’s push for diplomatic recognition. Last year two of Taiwan’s major allies, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, switched allegiances to Beijing. Both nations cited their burgeoning economic and financial needs, which Taiwanese assistance was not able to address.
This begs the question as to whether China is a threat to Pacific. The answer to this question depends on the angle we take. If we look at China’s rapid expansion in the region through the prism of the United States, Australia and their regional allies, it notwithstanding suggests that China is indeed a growing threat to the vested interests of the traditional powers. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the Pacific region generally lost its erstwhile significance to the US. The US not only reduced its aid budget substantially, but also closed down its aid giving agencies in the region. Nevertheless, the Chinese presence in the region has, arguably, forced the US to reopen its aid agencies and boost its aid volume.
Interestingly, the governments of the island nations do not perceive Chinese presence in their respective countries as a formidable threat. For them, the Sino-Taiwan cheque book diplomacy is a God-sent opportunity, where the two Asiatic economic giants spend astronomical sums of money in an attempt to buy allegiance of the microstates. The once forgotten and neglected region of the world is once again emerging in the global limelight. The US, UK, EU, Japan and Australia have all hiked up their development investments in the Pacific region, resulting in poverty alleviation, social development and economic growth.
However, despite a seemingly absent official government antipathy towards Beijing in the island nations, analysts warn against Han Chinese migrating in their droves to the Pacific. This could cause an imbalance in the ethnic composition of the island nations, which could fissure into ethnic tensions as happened in Tonga, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Pacific governments must be extra vigilant about this element and take pre-emptive measures to avoid repetition of ethnic conflicts in their countries. If the number of Chinese nationals increases in the region and that leads to anti-Chinese civil strife, warn experts, China will not deploy civilian aircrafts to evacuate its caught-in-the-conflict nationals as it did during 2006 and 2009 riots. Instead, Beijing will deploy warships and military personnel to quell anti-Chinese rioters and thereafter would justify maintaining long-term military bases in the region with an aim to protect its offshore nationals. Bearing the latter in mind, China’s multi-dimensional engagement in the Pacific could be deemed as a potential threat to the island nations.
(Pic Courtesy- Mark Schiefelbein/AFP/Getty Images)
(Saber Salem is a Doctoral Research Fellow with the OP Jindal Global University’s School of International Affairs, India. The views expressed are personal)
