Emanuele Scimia

The US wants expanded partnerships in the Pacific to contain China’s rise – but do its allies agree?

China’s economic clout in the Pacific is clearly growing, as its recent poaching of Taiwan allies has demonstrated. The US has expanded military activity to counter this, but it’s not certain it can sustain the necessary partnerships

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US Navy sailors ride in a rigid-hull inflatable from the USS Wayne E. Meyer during a drill as part of an Asean-US maritime exercise on September 5 in the Gulf of Thailand. The Pentagon has been sharply stepping up its efforts to counter China's growing military power. Photo: Handout via AFP

Emanuele Scimia

Published: 11:00am, 28 Oct 2019Updated: 11:04am, 28 Oct 2019

Chinese advances in the South Pacific are firmly in the sights of the United States. And it could not be otherwise, as the Pacific island nations are an essential component of the US strategy to tackle China’s growing military clout.

Beijing looks increasingly at ease in the region. At the third China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development Cooperation Forum, in Samoa last week, Chinese Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua presided over the signing of a programme of eight measures to contribute to the social and economic advancement of the region. Hu also emphasised Beijing’s interest in working with Pacific Island nations as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

In the narrative of the American security establishment, the belt and road scheme is nothing less than a geostrategic tool to erode US military supremacy in Asia and beyond.

Clearly, great power competition between the US and China is taking shape from the China seas to the South Pacific, with Washington and Beijing jockeying for influence in small, but strategically important, countries beyond the first island chain, which stretches from southern Japan to Borneo, including Taiwan and the Philippines.

China is actually gaining ground on the US in this battle for hearts and minds, as Beijing’s recent poaching of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies Kiribati and the Solomon Islands has shown – there is even speculation that the Chinese might use an island in the latter as a naval base.