[News Article] China’s Growing Influence in the Pacific is Warning to Australia and New Zealand
Arya Ahmad Afani — FPCI Universitas Airlangga
Recent China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi tour in seven Pacific countries physically and three virtually was an attempt to bolster its presence in the Pacific region which has been under the influence of Australia and New Zealand historically. China introduced the “Common Development Vision” and “Five Year Action Plan” to realize that vision. Those two documents encompass cooperation ranging from education by establishing the Confucius Institute and giving scholarships, telecom infrastructure, climate change, fishery, training for local police, security, economy, and Covid-19. China is trying to exploit Australia and New Zealand’s diminishing influence in the Pacific region by engaging more aggressively with these nations.
It appears that China wants to spread and embed its authoritarian model to Pacific countries by giving their law enforcer training and anti-protest gear to deal with future unrest. Similar to the Hongkong case where there was a shift from the soft persuasion model adopted in the 2014 Umbrella Movement to the harsh violent model adopted in the 2019–2020 Hongkong protest. Another interesting point is China’s desire to build telecom infrastructures which are needed by Pacific countries. Having control of the internet could give China big leverage over the Pacific countries. If a dispute arises, China could spies and cut off internet access thus leaving Pacific countries miserable and hopeless. The US, Australia, and Japan have been trying to counter China’s telecom infrastructure by developing their own undersea cable for clean networks in the Pacific.
In the fishery sector, China is allowed to develop a marine plan for fisheries to exploit Pacific tuna catch to fulfill its domestic seafood demand. As China’s fish stock is depleting due to extreme overfishing and lack of environmental protection, China wants to expand its vessel fleet and exploit fish stock in the Pacific. This could potentially put Pacific fishermen out of work considering the horrible fishing record that China has. The establishment of the Confucius Institute also poses a threat to academic freedom that Pacific countries have. There have been cases where Confucius Institute restricts academic freedom by censoring certain words such as “three T’s” (Tiananmen, Tibet, and Taiwan) and spreading China’s propaganda. In short, we can conclude that China has a lot more to gain from this project than Pacific countries.
This surely poses threat to the West because recently China and Solomon Island have signed security pact earlier earlier in April despite the fact that Solmon people rejected China’s growing presence during unrest in late 2021. That deal could potentially allow China to set up its naval base 2000km from Australia’s coast. Australia seeks to reposition itself to counter China’s growing presence in the Pacific region. Australia Foreign Minister Penny Wong stated that Australia got big homework to reclaim its position as partner of choice in the Pacific which is being contested by China. New Zealand is also aware of what China is doing in the Pacific. New Zealand foreign policy relies on a multilateral response by using the Pacific Island Forum to address complex regional problems because they believe that response must come from the Pacific Countries themselves.
China’s growing presence in the Pacific is a warning for Australia and New Zealand to pay more attention to its neighbor countries. Even though China’s proposal was rejected by all ten Pacific countries, Australia and New Zealand should increase their engagement and rebuild relations in the Pacific as China can play the long game by doing a second diplomatic wave sometime in the future. The Solomon Island case is a lesson for both Australia and New Zealand to keep an eye on what’s happening in the Pacific as they do not want the same thing to happen again to other Pacific countries.
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