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China's diplomatic gambit heralds new 'Battle for the Pacific'
By Andrew BEATTY
Sydney (AFP) June 3, 2022

China, Papua New Guinea discuss free-trade deal
Port Moresby (AFP) June 3, 2022 - China and Papua New Guinea held talks on a free-trade deal Friday, as Beijing's foreign minister wrapped up a landmark tour of the Pacific Islands with a stop in the resource-rich nation.

Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister James Marape said discussions in the capital Port Moresby had focused on economic cooperation and a long-mooted trade agreement.

China is already a major investor in Papua New Guinea and buys much of the country's gas, minerals, timber and other resources.

Beijing is vying with Australia to be Papua New Guinea's leading trading partner.

Marape, who has vowed to make his country the world's richest black Christian nation, said he wants to shift the economy away from primary materials to more lucrative finished products.

He has invited more Chinese investment and said work was ongoing on a trade deal.

"China and Papua New Guinea officials are going through tidying Chinese-PNG free-trade arrangements," Marape told journalists.

"The specifics of the free-trade arrangement are being finalised as we go through, so that Papua New Guinea interests are not suppressed or harmed, but maintained and in fact augmented," he said.

His comments come as China, Australia and other Western allies race for influence across the Pacific Islands.

The vast but sparsely populated region is home to vital shipping channels and -- because of its location near areas where the Chinese and US militaries operate -- seen as strategically important.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has criss-crossed the South Pacific for more than a week, pressing the case for a greater role by Beijing in regional security.

But his visit to Port Moresby has been overshadowed by complaints that it comes too close to Papua New Guinea's elections, which will be held in coming weeks, with the result expected in August.

Marape is facing a challenge for the premiership from former prime minister Peter O'Neill.

"Now is not the right time" for foreign visits, O'Neill said, adding that the government "should not sign any agreements on behalf of the state".

Marape dismissed that argument, saying "our country is still functional".

The two sides signed a series of agreements on investment in "green development", Covid-19 assistance, aid and health care.

Wang's 10-day tour has seen the Pacific Islands reject a regional deal that would have given Beijing a much greater role in sensitive areas including policing, cybersecurity and maritime surveillance.

His trip prompted Australia's new foreign minister Penny Wong to make quick-fire visits to three Pacific Island states, looking to shore up decades-long alliances.

Speaking in Tonga on Friday, Wong's host Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni stressed the importance of ties with Australia.

"There are common strands that bind us. They include respect for democracy, the rule of law, and the rights and freedoms of others. This remains the important tenets of our relations," he said.

A 10-day South Pacific island-hopping tour by China's top diplomat focused world attention on a usually overlooked region, opened a new front in Beijing's quest for global influence and challenged decades of Western primacy.

On the face of it, Wang Yi's trip was a failure.

His centrepiece proposal -- a regional pact to turbocharge China's role in Pacific island security -- was leaked to the press and then roundly rejected by regional leaders.

Representatives of the 10 Pacific island states were not shy about expressing their displeasure at China trying to ram through such a consequential agreement with next-to-no consultation.

"You cannot have regional agreement when the region hasn't met to discuss it," said Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata'afa.

Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama was even more pointed.

Standing next to Wang, he upbraided those focused on "geopolitical point-scoring", saying it "means less than little to anyone whose community is slipping beneath the rising seas".

In the carefully choreographed world of diplomacy, where texts and talking points are drafted, redrafted and broadly agreed upon long before "principals" like Wang even sit down, it was a stunning misfire.

"It was something of an overreach by China," said Wesley Morgan, an expert on the Pacific Islands at Griffith University.

"They must have had a slightly uncomfortable conversation."

When the dust settled, Chinese officials, better known in recent years for abrasive "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy, sounded chastened.

"Not every" China-Pacific Islands ministerial meeting "will necessarily produce outcome documents", the Chinese Embassy in Fiji tweeted.

"Please stay tuned."

- 'Counterattack' -

Despite the setbacks, Wang's trip represents a "step change" in Chinese ambitions in the region, said Euan Graham, an expert on Asia-Pacific Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Where China had sought to increase its influence "piecemeal", he said, "now the veil has dropped, there is confidence or overconfidence on China's part and there is a clear stepping up of efforts."

Wang spoke about "win-win" investments in infrastructure, fisheries, timber or mining assets, but he also pitched Chinese involvement in sensitive areas such as policing, cybersecurity and maritime surveillance.

Behind that push, experts see a much more ambitious geopolitical agenda -- a drive to weaken US influence, change Asia's military balance, hem in Australia and even prepare for a military takeover of Taiwan.

We "hope to expand our circle of friends," said Zhao Shaofeng, director of the Research Center for Pacific Island Countries at Liaocheng University in China.

"The United States has continued to encircle and blockade China internationally. China should counterattack the United States to a certain extent."

Some US officials worry Beijing's ultimate goal is to establish a military foothold in the South Pacific, which would force a reorganisation of US Pacific forces -- currently focused on North Korea and China.

If China were to develop just one base in the South Pacific, it would be "very vulnerable" given vast US assets in places such as Guam, said Graham.

"But they are obviously playing on a much larger canvas than that."

"If they were to get three or four," he said, they would have to be taken seriously by US defence planners.

- Not for sale -

There is a sense among analysts that China could bide its time, score small wins and pick off Pacific leaders when they see a domestic political advantage in allying with Beijing.

After all, Wang did not leave the region empty-handed, inking a series of bilateral agreements from Samoa to Papua New Guinea that, while modest, could make the presence of Chinese police, boats and officials a more normal sight.

The Solomon Islands, where Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare's rule was recently threatened by riots, has already signed a security deal that could allow Chinese police to come in to restore calm.

But Richard Herr, a University of Tasmania academic who has decades of experience working in the Pacific Islands, warns against underestimating local leaders.

"There is an image, an unfortunate image, in some quarters that the islands' loyalties are there to be bought," he told AFP. "They didn't get independence in order to sell it."

People "don't credit the Pacific" with "being able to engage in really astute foreign policymaking" and balancing relations with both China and the West, said Anna Powles, a security expert at New Zealand's Massey University.

But "they are doing exactly that".


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WATER WORLD
China says not competing for influence in South Pacific
Port Vila, Vanuatu (AFP) June 1, 2022
China has insisted it has "no intention to compete" for influence in the South Pacific as foreign minister Wang Yi and his Australian counterpart Penny Wong again jetted around the region Wednesday on duelling diplomatic charm offensives. In a statement distributed by the Chinese embassy in Canberra, Beijing said it "does not seek exclusive rights" in the region and "we have no intention to compete with others". The claim comes as Wang nears the end of a contentious 10-day visit to Pacific Islan ... read more

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