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Abstract
China’s growing involvement in the South Pacific is part of China’s growing involvement worldwide. Similarly, concerns about China’s growing influence in the South Pacific are part of concerns about the rise of China. The discussion of Chinese involvement in and policy toward the South Pacific should be placed within this bigger picture. An isolated study without understanding China’s grand strategy and overall foreign policy goals can be misguided.
... 13) has noted that "there is no convincing economic case for China to invest in "connectivity" infrastructure for small Pacific island states." Conversely, others observe how Chinese presence is neither grand strategy, nor imposed (Porter & Wesley-Smith, 2010;Yang, 2011). ...
... In another article "The Pacific islands in China's Grand Strategy: The small States, Big Games", the author points out from the perspective of grand strategy that although China has rapidly increased its influence in pacific island countries through aid and other channels, China's presence in the region should not be understood as driven by traditional military security strategies (Yang, 2011). The author believes that pacific island countries are far away from the Taiwan Strait and have limited military value to China. ...
In recent years, with the increase of China's aid to Pacific Island Countries（PIC), the issue of China's aid to Pacific Island countries has become a research hotspot in academic circles, and scholars from various countries have conducted different degrees of research on this. This article is a review article, enumerating some major books and articles for research on this issue. To better understand the research status of scholars from various countries in recent years on this issue, this article uses the literature analysis method to summarize and briefly analyze the main research results of the academic community. After sorting it out, it is found that scholars have different attitudes towards China's aid to Pacific Island countries. Some scholars hold negative views of China’s aid, while China’s scholars appreciate their aid. Regarding the development trend of this issue, scholars gradually gained a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of China's aid in the region and began to conduct more case studies. This research review can help people quickly understand the current research status of this issue. The article collates scholars' analysis of various aspects of China's aid, such as purpose, impact, and limitations.
... While its main objective is to create an inter-regional market, the BRI is also used as a platform to allow cultural exchanges between China and member countries. (Yang, 2011). In the same year when first Confucius Institute was opened in Fiji, China was also providing assistance for the construction of the Kiuva Sea Wall (Guxia, 2015). ...
The rise of China as one of the great powers in the international politic has been the hottest topic in the 21st century. Following the economic reform led by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, China re-emerges stronger than ever with its influences covering major parts of the world. One region particularly stands out since the prior dominance of United States therein, the South Pacific. The study of this research will be limited to 10 PICs recognising China, Vanuatu, Cook Island, FSM, Fiji, Niuee, PNG, Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Kiribati. Under the Western International Relations Theory (IRT) however, the rise of China is always seen in a rather malign manner. This research, therefore, contends that in order to fully understand China’s behaviour in the international community, we need to know how China perceives itself. By applying one of the most famous Chinese traditional school of thought, Daoism, this research aims to examine the strategy used in the expansion of China’s influence in the South Pacific. Daoism is symbolised with yin and yang, where the two elements are contradictory, yet they complement each other. Under the Dao dialectics, this research argues that China has been utilising a combination of two contradictory elements of power—soft and hard power—in expanding its prominence in the South Pacific region.
... 13) has noted that "there is no convincing economic case for China to invest in "connectivity" infrastructure for small Pacific island states." Conversely, others observe how Chinese presence is neither grand strategy, nor imposed (Porter & Wesley-Smith, 2010;Yang, 2011). ...
Academic writing on geoeconomics often neglects the lived experiences of local scale actors. This commentary develops the idea of ‘everyday geoeconomics’ to broaden the conceptual and methodological tools available to scholars when examining state‐led geoeconomic initiatives. Everyday geoeconomics includes a range of local responses to policies. It can be used to view these social practices as forms of text that are as important as formal, practical, popular texts referred to in critical geopolitics when analysing the spatial dimensions of economic change. Deemphasising lived experiences in geoeconomic work denotes the return of power/knowledge in human geography after its deconstruction within critical geopolitics. The commentary is enriched by reference to China's Belt and Road Initiative, a state policy held up as a model geoeconomic strategy. The work situates the Belt and Road Initiative in Oceania, where popular and academic debate has polarised around a statist discourse of China's presence as a positive or negative force. This polarisation relegates the lived experiences of residents and newly arrived Chinese as irrelevant to the Belt and Road and leaves us with an incomplete understanding about how those transactions and reactions are shaping global politics.
... China's increasing influence has generated discussions about its challenge to the dominance of the 'traditional powers'-the US, Australia, France, New Zealand, Great Britain-in the region (see Hanson and Fifita 2011;Henderson and Reilly 2003;Windybank 2005;Yang 2011). But others have also pointed to the complexity of these relationships, Pacific Island countries' agency and how 'new powers' like China provide alternative opportunities for Pacific Island countries (see Porter and Wesley-Smith 2010;Wesley-Smith 2010, 2013. ...
The most game changing event of the twenty-first century so far has been the unprecedented rise of China as world's second largest economy edging to surpass the United States—the largest economy of the world for last hundred plus years. Concurrently, China’s foreign policy has also undergone a drastic transformation. China has been developing a multifaceted relationship with countries of different regions and genres. China’s grand vision of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to connect it to Asia, Europe, Africa and their adjoining seas by constructing roadways, railways and ports, and Confucius Institutes. China has also become increasingly proactive in various multilateral organizations. One novel experiment in this has been China’s arrival in the Pacific Islands Region. For a long period of time, the region had been dominated by the United States and its allies—Australia and New Zealand in particular. The Pacific Islands, located in the Central and Southern Pacific Ocean, suffer from multiple challenges like remote locations, infrastructural deficit, and non-accessibility to the mainstream markets. Lately, their most crucial hurdle has been the climate change that entails rising sea levels and changing rainfall patterns which have come to be an existential threat for pacific islanders. They, however, also offer opportunities. Due to the abundant supply of natural resources like fish, minerals and natural gas and growing amount of sea trade they have acquired geo-strategic significance inviting the attention of major powers which China emerging as the new game-changer. The diplomatic relations between rising China and Pacific Islands Countries (PIC’s) goes back to 1970s and recent decades have witnessed a gradual increase in China’s trade and investment with these PIC’s. As a result, China today gives tough competition to region’s major partner nations. Australia has been especially anxious about China’s increasing trade and developmental assistance under BRI which has seen PIC’s constructing schools, hospitals, bridges, roads and stadiums with China’s investments. In addition to China’s competition to major partner nations of this region, China’s engagement with PIC has also been guided by its efforts to undercut PIC’s diplomatic support for Taiwan. Lately, China is also suspected of using its economic power to accomplish military interests as well. In this context, this chapter seeks to explore the discourse on China’s engagement in the Pacific islands region. It also elucidates how the ‘Taiwan factor’ has influenced China’s perspectives on this region. Lastly, it illustrates China’s use of economic diplomacy to achieve security interests where it examines Solomon Islands security agreement with China as a case study to extrapolate possible future trends.
Anticipatory geographies are state-driven initiatives promoting economic hope through the language of rejuvenation, prosperity and connectivity. As a discursive process, anticipatory geographies reconfigure spaces and identities. These narratives have proliferated in an age of intensified connectivity as states aim to imprint their political and economic visions. Oceania has become a site of multiple anticipatory geographies external and internal to the region with the presence of China as an enabling factor. In 2006, Fiji reintroduced a Look North policy to globalize economic connectivity placing Fijian agency at the centre, and in 2015, Beijing included Oceania into China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework. This work examines the processes when two anticipatory geographies meet. Adapting critical geopolitics, the research presents the findings of a critical discourse analysis of Chinese and Fijian texts referencing Look North and BRI. The work reveals the entanglement of anticipatory geographies in Fiji has generated a co-produced discourse of prosperity displaying continuity from Look North to the BRI. Although there is a shift toward defining the Sino-Fijian relationship through BRI, it does not signal an overwrite of an indigenous policy framework. I argue Look North has been ‘re-placed’ into the BRI to co-produce a narrative that permits the ongoing articulation of Fijian interests. With the Belt and Road becoming the defining framework for China's relations with countries across Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas, this work suggests Fiji's handling of BRI's impact on its domestic spaces and policies is an indicator of how other states will reposition their promises of economic hope to civil society.
The past five years have witnessed a leap in Chinese engagement in regions across the globe - even reaching as far as the South Pacific. This essay examines China's increasing activities there; the regional response; Beijing's potential economic, political, and strategic motivations; and the implications for the U.S. © 2007 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
In this policy paper, Terence Wesley-Smith explores strategic, political, and economic dimensions of Beijing's heightened interest in Oceania. He challenges the disingenuous threat discourse pervading the existing literature, and argues that China's rise offers island states opportunities not available under established structures of power. Wesley-Smith notes that China's primary objective is to gain the support of island states, particularly to isolate Taiwan, and that it has a growing interest in the natural resources of the region. China and the Western powers previously shared an interest in excluding the Soviet Union from Oceania. But today tensions associated with China's presence increasingly influence the strategic environment. China is not setting itself up to assume a leadership or military role in Oceania, Wesley-Smith maintains. He disputes the notion that Beijing has exploited regional vulnerabilities, and that its activities have encouraged corruption and instability. He also argues that U.S. neglect is not a significant factor in the rise of China in Oceania. Instead, Western aid-leveraged efforts to impose neo-liberal reforms have made island leaders more receptive to peaceful coexistence, equality, respect for sovereignty, and the promise of untied aid. Wesley-Smith argues that China's rise in Oceania largely parallels developments in the Caribbean, and disturbs a situation where a small number of allied powers exercise enormous regional influence. But he notes that all of these regional actors have growing economic entanglements with China—and compelling reasons to avoid confrontation. He suggests that the Western powers have to accept that China is in Oceania to stay. They can do little but urge Beijing to play by the rules they have established and enforced, yet it may be the allied powers that have to compromise. Wesley-Smith concludes that China's rise broadens the options for island states, whose leaders are accustomed to operating in a world controlled by great powers.
David Shambaugh, a leading international authority on Chinese strategic and military affairs, offers the most comprehensive and insightful assessment to date of the Chinese military. The result of a decade's research, Modernizing China's Military comes at a crucial moment in history, one when international attention is increasingly focused on the rise of Chinese military power. Basing his analysis on an unprecedented use of Chinese military publications and interviews with People's Liberation Army (PLA) officers, Shambaugh addresses important questions about Chinese strategic intentions and military capabilities--questions that are of key concern for government policymakers as well as strategic analysts and a concerned public.
The collapse of communism in Europe, the quest for economic security and the War on Terror have all affected China's view of security matters. Ong provides a comprehensive study of the new policy and security challenges China faces in the coming years. Covering all of China's current security interests and concerns, this remarkable book includes chapters on Chinese concepts of security, the role of the United States, and regional tensions including the Korean peninsula, Japan, Taiwan, and China's quest for 'great power' status.
China's recent growth has called attention to the power-transition theory, which contends that the danger of a major war is the greatest when a rising dissatisfied challenger threatens to overtake a declining satisfied hegemon. Steve Chan questions this prevailing view by analyzing the extent of ongoing power shifts among the leading powers, exploring the portents for their future growth, and seeking indicators of their relative commitment to the existing international order. To better understand the strategic motivations of ascending and declining states, insights are drawn from prospect theory and past episodes of peaceful and violent transition (such as the end of the Cold War and the outbreak of the First and Second World Wars). He concludes that China is unlikely to instigate a confrontation with the US, and that whilst military conflict over the Taiwan Strait is possible, this is more likely to be due to China's inability to prevent US involvement than its willingness to provoke the US. This book places China in a comparative and historical context, in which inquiry is informed by the experiences of other major powers and pertinent theories in international relations, such as those on extended deterrence, preventive war, and democratic peace. Its comparative and theoretical orientation and its contrarian perspective will be of great interest not only to students and scholars of international relations and Chinese politics, but also to policy makers and professionals.
This report focuses on the 14 sovereign nations of the Southwest Pacific, or Pacific Islands region, and the major external powers (the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, Japan, and China). It provides an explanation of the region's main geographical, political, and economic characteristics and discusses United States interests in the Pacific and the increased influence of China, which has become a growing force in the region. The report describes policy options as considered at the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders, held in Washington, DC, in March 2007. Although small in total population (approximately 8 million) and relatively low in economic development, the Southwest Pacific is strategically important. The United States plays an overarching security role in the region, but it is not the only provider of security, nor the principal source of foreign aid. It has relied upon Australia and New Zealand to help promote development and maintain political stability in the region. Key components of U.S. engagement in the Pacific include its territories (Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa), the Freely Associated States (Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau), military bases on Guam and Kwajalein atoll (Marshall Islands), and relatively limited aid and economic programs. Some experts argue that U.S. involvement in the Southwest Pacific has waned since the end of the Cold War, leaving a power vacuum, and that the United States should pay greater attention to the region and its problems. They contend that in some Pacific Island countries, weak political and legal institutions, corruption, civil unrest, and economic scarcity could lead to the creation of failed states or allow for foreign terrorist activity within their borders. According to some observers, unconditional and unregulated foreign aid and business investment from China and Taiwan, which may be attractive to some Pacific Island states, may exacerbate underlying political, social, and economic tensions in the region. While China's influence is largely limited to diplomatic and economic "soft power," many analysts disagree about the PRC's long-term intentions. In 2007, the Bush Administration pledged to "re-engage" with the region and declared 2007 the "Year of the Pacific." Among the main topics, aims, and initiatives under discussion at the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders were: expanding U.S. public diplomacy efforts and foreign aid activities; strengthening U.S.-Pacific trade and preferential trade programs for Pacific Island countries; addressing global warming and other environmental concerns in the region; and enhancing educational and cultural exchanges. Several bills to increase U.S. foreign aid to the region have been introduced in the 110th Congress. This report will be updated as warranted.
Despite widespread fears about China's growing economic clout and political stature, Beijing remains committed to a "peaceful rise": bringing its people out of poverty by embracing economic globalization and improving relations with the rest of the world. As it emerges as a great power, China knows that its continued development depends on world peace--a peace that its development will in turn reinforce.
The rise of China is not an existential problem for China's neighbors or the United States, but it is a geopolitical challenge. On land and at sea, abetted by China's favorable location on the map, Beijing's influence is expanding—from Central Asia to the South China Sea and from the Russian Far East to the Indian Ocean. By securing its economic needs, China is shifting the balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere.
This article considers the background to, and implications of, the increased diplomatic, economic and strategic interest China is showing in the Pacific Island region. While in recent times this has been linked to political instability in the islands, Chinese contact with the region dates back to the colonial era. In the post-World War Two period Taiwan has competed with China for influence and recognition. The reasons why five island states (Nauru, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands, the Marshall Islands and Palau) recognise Taiwan are explored. The conclusion reflects on the implications of strains in US-China relations, as well as indications that the region is undergoing a geopolitical transition from American to Asian influence.
This article examines the increasing complex interdependence of China and the United State in an era of globalization. Deng Xiaoping's strategy of reform and opening requires a peaceful international environment. The normalization of relations with Washington was critical for China's move toward modernization. As China opens its door wider, Sino-American relations have matured to a much higher level. As the recent Strategic Economic Dialogue between Beijing and Washington indicate, bilateral relations have become truly interdependent. Interdependence creates both sensitivity and vulnerability. Lampton has described U.S.-China relations in terms of “same bed, different dreams” (tongchuang yimeng). Considering the common challenges of global financial crisis and international terrorism, perhaps it is more appropriate to think of China and the United States as strategic partners sailing in the same boat (tongzhou gongji). The complex interdependence between the two countries is particularly critical in an age of global turbulence. This article analyzes the current challenges of China-U.S. relations in the context of turbulent globalization.
The PRC and Taiwan are competing to gain diplomatic recognition from Pacific Islands states, a number of which recognise Taiwan and serve as a barrier to its international isolation. Since much of Oceania is in Australia's sphere of influence, this struggle has often involved Canberra. This paper focuses on the intensifying conflict–with conclusions about the local political economic situations of the countries in Oceania that are most likely to switch recognition, the dilemmas that the issue poses for Australia and its alliance with the US, and the game theory of these auctions of diplomatic recognition. The rental of recognition is analysed as a “sovereignty business” in which some Pacific Islands states engage—similar to the offshore financial centres which are prevalent in the region. Yes Yes
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