On a walk through the city where China’s chancellor met on Monday with leaders from nearly a dozen Pacific island nations, Beijing’s imprint is unmistakable.
On one side of Suva, there is a bridge rebuilt with Chinese loans and inaugurated at an event where the Fiji prime minister posed next to the Chinese ambassador. On the other, Beijing’s massive new diplomatic mission sits on a street repaired by workers in neon vests emblazoned with the name of a Chinese state-owned company.
Hovering over it all is Wanguo Friendship Plaza, an apartment tower built by an Asian giant company that was destined to be the tallest building in the South Pacific — until the Fiji government halted construction over security concerns.
Eight years after leader Xi Jinping visited Fiji, offering the region’s island countries a ride on the “development express train,” China is entrenched with its irrepressible, if not always accepted, power. And that leaves the United States trying to catch up in a strategic arena.
Across the Pacific, Beijing’s plans have become more ambitious, more visible — and more polarizing. China is no longer just looking for opportunities on the islands that played a critical role in Japan’s pre-World War II strategic planning; with the chancellor traveling to eight island nations, the country seeks to unite the vast region in agreements for greater access to its land, seas and digital infrastructure, promising in return development, scholarships and training.
China has already shown how to “capture the elite” in places with small populations, great need for development and leaders who often silence local media. Although he returned home without signing the treaty presented to a region that has long emphasized sovereignty and consensus, Foreign Minister Wang Yi has collected several minor victories.
More importantly, in the Solomon Islands, Wang has signed new agreements — including one that gives Beijing the power to send in security forces to quell unrest or protect Chinese investment and possibly build a port for commercial and military use.
Chinese officials deny that this is the plan. But the deal — along with others with the Solomons and Kiribati, the details of which were not released — was made possible by something else visible and much discussed in the Pacific: a long-standing lack of American urgency, innovation and resources.
For many observers, the South Pacific today reveals what US decline looks like. Even as Washington has tried to step up its game, it is still lagging behind, confusing speeches with impact and interest with influence. “There’s a lot of talk,” says Sandra Tarte, head of the governance and international affairs department at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. “And not much substance.”
the absent american
“The US doesn’t have a significant presence in the Pacific,” says Anna Powles, a professor of security studies at Massey University in New Zealand. “I’m always shocked that in Washington they think they have a significant presence when they just don’t.”
US officials point out that their country has large military bases on Guam, as well as close ties with countries like the Marshall Islands. And in February Antony Blinken became the first secretary of state in 36 years to visit Fiji, where he announced that the US will reopen the embassy in the Solomon Islands and get more involved in issues such as illegal fishing and climate change.
Fiji’s interim prime minister at the time, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, called the American return movement “a very strong philosophical commitment”. The question is whether that will be enough.
Blinken said last week that “China is the only country intent on reshaping the international order and, increasingly, it has the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do so.” He promised that the US “will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance the vision of an open and inclusive international system.”
But that vision in this part of the world was slow to arrive. It took Joe Biden’s administration more than a year to launch its Indo-Pacific strategy, which is sloppy in detail and superlative in diaphanous phrases (“maximally favorable”), which make sense especially at gatherings of men in dark suits and brooches. of flags.
Congressional Republicans and Democrats who agree that something must be done to fight China have been fighting for 15 months over a bill to make the US more competitive — and which would still do little or nothing for disputed regions like the Pacific.
The new embassy in the Solomon Islands also looks less impressive on closer inspection. To replace the representation that closed in the 1990s during the post-Cold War US withdrawal, the outpost will start with a rented office, two American employees and five local contractors.
Compared to the Chinese presence, it’s not even close. In Fiji, for example, the Chinese embassy is in the center of Suva and has staff who speak better English and often appear in the local media. The US one, on the other hand, is on a remote hillside, in a fortified complex. It covers five countries (Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu), has no full-time ambassador — Biden named someone just last week — and is known to be understaffed.
Chinese alternative
Many island countries in the Pacific do not welcome another era of great-power competition. As Matthew Wale, leader of the opposition in the Solomon Islands, said in a recent interview: “We don’t want to be the grass trampled by the elephants.” But what they want, and what China seems to offer better now, is consistent engagement and empowerment.
While the US has displayed Coast Guard vessels used to combat illegal fishing, China plans to build shipping hubs and high-tech police centers where expertise and equipment can be provided.
As the US and its allies Australia and New Zealand provide humanitarian aid — in the wake of the Tonga tsunami, for example — Beijing is offering thousands of scholarships for vocational, diplomatic and disaster response training, as well as “cooperation in meteorological observation.” “.
“China has always maintained that countries large and small are all the same,” Xi said in a written message to Pacific foreign ministers on Monday. “No matter how international circumstances fluctuate, China will always be a good friend.”
Pacific island nations are now deciding how much to trust this friendship or resist it.
