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US-China relations
OpinionComment
Sameed Basha
Sameed Basha

Opinion | How the US can reset ties with Pacific Island nations drifting towards China

  • Pacific Island countries lack basic infrastructure, and whatever they have developed is threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change
  • China, by offering investments rather than aid, is only filling the vacuum left by the US and its regional allies

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Seawater floods past an ineffective sea wall into Veivatuloa village in Fiji on July 16. Leaders of 15 low-lying Pacific island nations declared climate change their “single greatest existential threat” at a summit in Fiji’s capital, Suva. Photo: Reuters
Sameed Basha
The first US-Pacific Island Country Summit will be held later this month in an attempt to present the United States as a counterweight to China’s growing influence in the Pacific region. The focus of the two-day summit is to address the shift in the regional equilibrium after the Solomon Islands signed a security pact with China.
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The summit appears to be a show of episodic attention, rudderless and subject to strategic drift. Washington perceives Beijing to be contesting its dominance in the region, but such objections are of limited merit.

Most Pacific Island nations have been independent for more than 40 years, but despite this autonomy, their average GDP per capita stands at less than US$5,000. These nations lack basic infrastructure; whatever they have developed is threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change. They need action, and China is filling the vacuum left by the US and its regional allies.

The shift towards China is neither an affirmation of communism nor an endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party but rather a once-in-a-generation opportunity to seek an alternative to US unilateralism.

China’s move into the Pacific is not the first time a country has tried to present itself as an alternative; the Soviet Union had also embarked on such a campaign during the Cold War.

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In 1985, Kiribati signed a US$1.7 million fishing pact with the Soviet Union after the US failed to recognise the island nation’s exclusive right to migratory fish in its economic zone. The US government’s failure to force the American Tunaboat Association to pay fishing fees added to the financial woes of the island nation, which had a budget of around US$9 million at the time. Observers noted no ideological shift towards communism; Kiribati was merely looking after its economic interests.

Yet this year, the Solomon Islands, like Kiribati before it, was accused of shifting its ideological stance towards China. The fuss was unwarranted, however, because the US had closed its embassy in Honiara in 1993, and Australian aid to the country, in the form of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, had ended in 2017.
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