China’s Engagement with the Pacific Islands

Abstract

The most game changing event of the twenty-first century so far has been the unprecedented rise of China as world's second largest economy edging to surpass the United States—the largest economy of the world for last hundred plus years. Concurrently, China’s foreign policy has also undergone a drastic transformation. China has been developing a multifaceted relationship with countries of different regions and genres. China’s grand vision of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to connect it to Asia, Europe, Africa and their adjoining seas by constructing roadways, railways and ports, and Confucius Institutes. China has also become increasingly proactive in various multilateral organizations. One novel experiment in this has been China’s arrival in the Pacific Islands Region. For a long period of time, the region had been dominated by the United States and its allies—Australia and New Zealand in particular. The Pacific Islands, located in the Central and Southern Pacific Ocean, suffer from multiple challenges like remote locations, infrastructural deficit, and non-accessibility to the mainstream markets. Lately, their most crucial hurdle has been the climate change that entails rising sea levels and changing rainfall patterns which have come to be an existential threat for pacific islanders. They, however, also offer opportunities. Due to the abundant supply of natural resources like fish, minerals and natural gas and growing amount of sea trade they have acquired geo-strategic significance inviting the attention of major powers which China emerging as the new game-changer. The diplomatic relations between rising China and Pacific Islands Countries (PIC’s) goes back to 1970s and recent decades have witnessed a gradual increase in China’s trade and investment with these PIC’s. As a result, China today gives tough competition to region’s major partner nations. Australia has been especially anxious about China’s increasing trade and developmental assistance under BRI which has seen PIC’s constructing schools, hospitals, bridges, roads and stadiums with China’s investments. In addition to China’s competition to major partner nations of this region, China’s engagement with PIC has also been guided by its efforts to undercut PIC’s diplomatic support for Taiwan. Lately, China is also suspected of using its economic power to accomplish military interests as well. In this context, this chapter seeks to explore the discourse on China’s engagement in the Pacific islands region. It also elucidates how the ‘Taiwan factor’ has influenced China’s perspectives on this region. Lastly, it illustrates China’s use of economic diplomacy to achieve security interests where it examines Solomon Islands security agreement with China as a case study to extrapolate possible future trends.KeywordsPacific Islands CountriesTaiwanDiplomatic CompetitionSolomon Islands