China and the US are competing for wet real estate, underwater resources and military edge among the South Pacific’s secluded island nations, a powerhouse contest to gain influence over their economies, airstrips, seaports and security forces.
China is commonly perceived as expanding its Belt and Road system across the Pacific’s wet” Blue Continent” to finally reach North, Central, and South America plus Antarctica, all the while empowering Beijing’s military, businesses, global policies and politics.
China won a victory on May 2 when the strategically important Solomon Islands elected pro-Beijing Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele, 55, a former foreign minister in the country’s once-friendly state of incoming prime minister Manasseh Sogavare.
Because the two nations had signed a diplomatic Solomon Islands Security Agreement in 2022, the US, Australia, New Zealand, and their allies were now concerned.
The China-Salomon Islands agreement, according to critics, might enable Beijing to establish a military base on the islands, which are 2, 000 kilometers east of Australia. According to China and the Solomon Islands, the agreement would certainly lead to the establishment of a Chinese military center on the country’s 900 smaller islands or its six main islands.
In the event of an armed conflict between the big forces, Manele, the next foreign secretary, told Parliament in 2022,” We are no stupid to ask for a military base, as we ourselves could be the goal of a military attack in the future.”
He said,” Having a stable Solomon Islands is also about ensuring stable and prosperous Pacific region.”
China trained the Solomon Islands ‘ police, provided water cannon vehicles and boosted their anti- riot tactics after unrest, some of it anti- Chinese, disrupted the islands.
Protests, riots, arson and looting erupted in 2021 after the Solomon Islands switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019 when Manele was foreign minister. Australia, under its joint security pact with the Solomon Islands, sent police to the islands ‘ capital Honiara to quash the civil unrest.
Manele was expected to maintain Solomon Islands ‘ friendly relations with China, which dramatically improved under the leadership of incoming prime minister Sogavare, who chose Manele as a candidate for prime minister. The Solomon Islands will be “friends to all, and enemies to none”, Manele said.
China’s recent construction of an airfield on Guadalcanal, the largest of the Solomon Islands, evoked chilling reminders of America’s World War II Battle of Guadalcanal to seize it from Japan.
Guadalcanal Island was the first major US military offensive to stop Japan from using the Solomons to bomb ships passing between the US and Australia in 1942.
Under intense enemy fire, US forces scurried west across the Pacific to defeat Japan after capturing control of the Solomon Islands and other island nations.
Today, many of the Solomon Islands ‘ 720, 000 citizens say they favor Manele not for his international stance, but in hopes his Ownership, Unity and Responsibility ( OUR) Party will upgrade the islands ‘ poor health care, transportation infrastructure, electricity supply, schools, employment opportunities, housing and other daily needs.
The Solomon Islands is one of the world’s poorest nations. To enable Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company, to build mobile telecommunications towers on its islands, China granted the Solomon Islands a$ 66 million loan.
The Solomon Islands and Australia also provided funding for Huawei’s 2018 contract for underwater telecommunication cables to and from the islands.
In a meeting billed as a” Ministerial Dialogue on Police Capacity Building and Cooperation Between China and Pacific Island Countries in Beijing,” the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and the Cook Islands sent delegates to hear China’s plan to strengthen law enforcement and security cooperation in 2023.
In a joint 2023 statement, the Solomon Islands reportedly agreed to Beijing’s positions on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet.
” China has been on the front foot across the Pacific for many years, doing trade and security deals with island countries, while the US is only now stepping up with new embassies opening in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Tonga”, said Ben Bohane, a Vanuatu- based Pacific political analyst and photojournalist.
From the perspective of islands, the competition has given them for the first time as various powers try to court them, including Arab nations like Israel, Japan, and even India, according to Bohane in an interview.
Meanwhile, on the island nation of Kiribati, a” Chinese police delegation team works with the Kiribati Police Service to assist a community policing program, and martial arts kung fu, and an IT ( information technology ) department, assisting our crime database”, Kiribati’s acting Police Commissioner Eeri Aritiera told Reuters in February.
About a dozen uniformed Chinese police officers landed for a six-month rotation in 2023 and have since been updated.
When asked about Kiribati and China, the US State Department told government-run Voice of America (VOA ) in February,” We do not believe importing security forces from [ China ] will help any country.” After excluding Taiwan, Kiribati established relations with China in 2019 and is located two hundred kilometers south of Hawaii.
China is considering how to finance the reconstruction of Kanton Island, a coral atoll in Kiribati, which had been a major stopover for military and commercial aircraft during World War II.
Kanton will now be a tourist destination that Chinese tourists visiting other islands would enjoy visiting, according to China and Kiribati. If financed and built by China, the airstrip on Kanton would be for passenger flights, including within Kiribati’s chain of islands, but not for military use, Kiribati said.
Kiribati also receives financial assistance from the US, Canada, Japan, the European Union and others.
” Australia is supporting the Kiribati Police Service with major upgrades to its policing infrastructure, including a new barracks and headquarters and radio network”, Australia’s Foreign Affairs Department told Reuters in February.
The International Dateline intersects the Equator, and Kiribati’s islands are splattered across the map in four different areas.
Some islands are east of the dateline, while others are west of it, and some islands are north of the Equator, while others are below it.
One of the largest exclusive economic areas on earth is Kiribati, which asserts more than 3.5 million square kilometers of territorial rights in the Pacific Ocean.
” Pacific countries have long felt their infrastructure needs have not been met, so it is difficult for them to tell island nations not to accept assistance from China if traditional partners like Australia, New Zealand, and the US do n’t provide the wharves, roads, and airports,” Bohane said.
Under The Compacts of Free Association ( COFA ), Washington exerts some control over three island countries: Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.
The Pentagon has the power to land troops and weapons on COFA’s territories under the agreement, which was signed in 2023, and to prevent other nations from doing so. Many COFA citizens who enlisted in the US armed forces as a quick way to become Americans after serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries are familiar with the US military.
After feeling economically exploited and destabilized by China’s overwhelming wealth, Palau President Surangel Whipps reportedly requested from the Pentagon to construct ports, bases, and airfields on its islands.
Under COFA, the US agreed to pay$ 7 billion over the next 20 years in assistance to Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau. In February however,” the funding was dropped from the security supplemental in the US Senate, under pressure from conservatives who wanted to lower costs”, VOA reported.
” With no amendment process permitted, the funds could not be added back in”.
A mangled COFA could wreck the islands ‘ confidence in US backing, critics said. It “opens the door for China to make similar overtures to the COFA nations”, Hawaii’s Senator Mazie Hirono warned.
The US West coast is protected from China’s eastern shores by a Three Island Chain, a theory that was developed in the US during the US-Korea War to protect against China and the Soviet Union.
Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo, and other islands in the increasingly militarized and contested South China and East China seas are included in the First Island Chain.
Further southward, the Second Island Chain connects Guam with the Mariana Islands, Palau, Yap, and islands farther south.
The Third Island Chain runs south from the Aleutian Islands, through the center of the Pacific and the Hawaiian Islands, to American Samoa, Fiji and New Zealand.
Since 1978, Richard S. Ehrlich, an American foreign correspondent reporting from Asia and the recipient of Columbia University’s Foreign Correspondents ‘ Award, has been based in Bangkok. Excerpts from his two new nonfiction books,” Rituals. Killers. Wars. &, Sex. — Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka &, New York” and” Apocalyptic Tribes, Smugglers &, Freaks” are available here.