Sarah Bradley: turning Pacific tides

For even the casual observer of recent Pacific affairs, it’s clear the sands of influence in the region are shifting.

In 2023, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) opened an office in Suva, Fiji, and established a representative in Papua New Guinea. But with the Trump Administration now dismantling USAID, funding from the agency is predicted to fall by 80 percent, which would not only adversely affect Pacific Island economies but also undermine traditional regional alignments. Pacific Island governments will have to look elsewhere for assistance.

Signs that the tides of power are turning in the Pacific have been visible for some time.

The primary colonisers of the Pacific Islands – France, the US and the UK – have steered themselves away from the role of controller (with the exceptions of France in New Caledonia and French Polynesia; and the US in American Samoa) and towards the role of supporter. And these Western allies – which now include New Zealand and Australia – have generally had the same goals: to improve the economic, trade, climate and social position of their Pacific partners and to strengthen defence in the region from any aggressors.

This Western hegemony, however, has been challenged in recent years by China and Russia.

China is now the second-largest aid donor and investor in the Pacific region, behind only Australia, and is poised to challenge traditional donors for influence.

Pursuing its global infrastructure development strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has signed political agreements with several Pacific nations over the past decade, and has funded, chiefly through loans, several airports, ports and roads. The BRI aims to boost trade and economic growth; however, smaller states can find themselves in a debt trap, unable to pay back China’s loans.

And while China has been unable to set up its own military bases in the region, this infrastructure development has concerned Western allies, wary of China’s potential to use it to increase its military presence. China is expanding its maritime footprint in the region, through illegal fishing and armed forces activity; many Chinese fishing boats are a part of China’s armed forces.

China has also hastened its encouragement of Pacific Island nations to switch recognition from Taipei to Beijing – a move usually accompanied by some sort of bilateral agreement.

In the case of the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, those agreements have not been made public, but Kiribati severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 2019 and has since grown closer to China. Diplomatic relations between China and the Solomon Islands were established in 2019 after the Solomon Islands cut ties with Taiwan. In April 2022, the Solomon Islands signed a strategic pact with China, despite fierce objection from New Zealand, Australia and the US, which feared the possibility of a Chinese military base being constructed there.

Since Trump came to power, the Cook Islands has signed a seabed minerals deal with China, without consulting New Zealand, with which it has a realm partnership. This move has been particularly concerning to Western allies because of the Cook Islands’ large exclusive economic zone and the presence of Russian ships in the region. China could also, under the auspices of disaster recovery, bring in its military to the Cook Islands. It has a similar disaster recovery programme with the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

In New Caledonia, China has courted the nation’s independence leaders for many years. France’s moves to derail the independence process by changing the electoral roll would have deeply concerned China because of the risk that independence will be delayed for another generation. China has become the second biggest importer of New Caledonia’s nickel and has recently started investing in the nickel industry there.

So, as the potential withdrawal of the majority of US aid from the Pacific’s developing states looms, China is likely to increase the pace of its bilateral interventions. The recent Cook Islands agreement further signals a shift in the region’s geopolitical power balance in China’s favour.

Dr Sarah Bradley has been a journalist for 35 years and has worked for CNN and ABC in New York, and TV3, TVNZ, Radiolive and RNZ in New Zealand. In 2024, she gained a PhD in Politics and International Relations, focused on the politics of New Caledonia, from the University of Auckland.

The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of her doctoral degree mentors Dr Geoff Kemp and Associate Professor (ret) Stephen Hoadley for constructive suggestions.