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Fan Chen

Laura Zhou

On paper, Western countries are rushing to sign defence pacts in the South Pacific, ensuring their influence in a region long neglected as a geopolitical backwater. But on the water, the island nations are playing a very different game.
Instead of taking sides, local leaders are leveraging the geopolitical tug of war between China and the West, winning security guarantees from the latter while Beijing builds infrastructure and deepens its economic footprint.
In June, Vanuatu – an archipelago nation around 1,750 km (1,090 miles) east of Australia – signed a security pact with Canberra. A week later in early July, Fiji signed its first mutual defence treaty with Australia. The treaty is open for other Pacific nations to join.
Beijing issued similar responses to both developments, saying the countries’ cooperation should not target any third party or be used to “engage in geopolitical games”.
These manoeuvres represent Australia’s latest efforts in what Foreign Minister Penny Wong has described as a “permanent contest” for influence in the region against an increasingly assertive China.
They also shed light on Australia’s ambition of becoming the Pacific’s preferred security partner and shutting out China’s influence, said Connor Graham, a research fellow at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute.
The art of hedging
For Pacific island nations, these pacts are a calculated hedge.
Balancing major powers was a core survival strategy for the countries, said Graeme Smith, deputy director of the Coral Bell School of Asia-Pacific Affairs at Australian National University.
“Nearly all Pacific countries’ major trading partner is China, but also the Pacific Ocean is filled with US military facilities and you do not have the capacity to shut them out,” Smith said.
“You have no choice but to balance and make the best of it.”
The US’ permanent military presence in the South Pacific dates back to the end of the 19th century, when Washington annexed American Samoa and soon after built its first naval base south of the equator.
During World War II, the Allies operated airbases and naval airfields across the South Pacific – including in Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.
After the war, Washington shifted its security focus northwards to Guam and Hawaii, largely leaving it to Australia and New Zealand to further Western interests in the South Pacific.
Graham of the Lowy Institute said that not becoming “a theatre for great-power competition” had been a priority for local leaders.
For Pacific nations, Australia might be the preferred security partner, but they still looked to China for trade and development, he said.
Such balancing acts are evident across the region.
Last month, Papua New Guinea ordered the closure of Taiwan’s representative office in its capital just days after the Pacific country’s first defence alliance treaty with Australia came into effect. That was a signal to Beijing that it was still welcome “to come in and have a presence”, Graham noted.

In May, Vanuatu balanced its new security alliance with Australia by simultaneously entering into talks with Beijing on a strategic cooperation pact.
Canberra and Port Vila agreed to water down key clauses that were apparently aimed at limiting Chinese investment in Vanuatu’s ports, airports and telecommunications, replacing what was functionally a veto with a weaker provision for consultation.
Last year, months after granting Australia veto power over several kinds of pacts the country could seal with third parties in exchange for A$140 million (US$98 million) in aid, Nauru hedged its bets by signing a A$1 billion investment proposal with a Chinese state-linked company without consulting Canberra.
The delicacy of the region’s balancing act was most clearly evident last month, when a People’s Liberation Army submarine test-launched a long-range ballistic missile with a dummy warhead, which was believed to have landed near the exclusive economic zones of Tuvalu and Kiribati, over 1,000 km northeast of the Solomon Islands.


Canberra immediately accused Beijing of “destabilising” the region and the United States criticised China for providing only a few hours’ notice of its launch.
Speaking alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese a day after China’s missile test, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale confirmed that his government had lodged an official diplomatic protest.
“China is a good friend of Solomon Islands, but this is not something a friend does. This is not good in our region,” Wale said.
Xu Shaomin, deputy director of the Centre for Oceanian Studies at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, southern China, said Honiara’s rhetoric was “nuanced” and “measured”, a reflection of the tightrope the nation must walk.
The Solomon Islands is widely viewed as China’s closest partner in the region. It signed a security pact with Beijing in 2022, less than three years after cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Months after signing the pact, it also turned a US Coast Guard vessel away from its ports.
However, Wale’s administration has re-engaged with the US since taking office in May, signing a pact on July 28 that allows the US Coast Guard to patrol its waters with local police aboard.
Beijing, which sees Taiwan as part of China and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve reunification, objects to any official exchanges with the self-ruled island. Most countries, including the US – Taiwan’s main international backer – do not recognise it as an independent state. However, Washington is opposed to any attempt to take Taiwan by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
Xu said Pacific nations were well aware of China’s red lines, particularly regarding Taiwan, and were not looking to cross them.
“If China were to withdraw, they would lose a vital piece of leverage in their geopolitical game with Australia, New Zealand and the US,” Xu said.
Smith said that Beijing was likely to capitalise on the Pacific Island nations’ desire to balance competing major powers.
“I think China is probably quite sanguine about all these agreements being signed and looking to use them as an opportunity to push for closer bilateral ties with countries signing the agreements,” he said.
Domestic reality
Besides their geopolitical position, the countries have to manage domestic frustrations, with the public seeing such international manoeuvring as a distraction from pressing needs like health, education and the rising cost of living, according to Smith.
Despite strong post-pandemic economic rebounds as tourism resumed, South Pacific nations remain vulnerable to external shocks, especially energy prices. In May, the World Bank projected that economic growth across 11 Pacific nations would slow to 2.8 per cent in 2026.
Youth unemployment rates are high and rising. Many skilled workers such as teachers and medical professionals are emigrating in search of better wages.
Moreover, the countries’ physical future is in doubt as rising sea levels threaten to submerge swathes of their territory.
In December, the first climate migrants arrived in Australia from Tuvalu, where more than one-third of its 11,000 people have applied for a climate visa to migrate to Australia under a deal struck between the two countries two years ago.
Nasa scientists have projected that half of Tuvalu’s main atoll of Funafuti may be submerged by 2050.
“Small and beautiful”
China funded and constructed major infrastructure in the Solomon Islands after Honiara’s 2019 diplomatic switch.
That included US$119 million for a national sports stadium complex and aquatic centre in Honiara to host the 2023 Pacific Games. Australia, meanwhile, provided a Pacific Games Partnership of about US$11.4 million to support the event.

In November, Beijing signed a framework agreement with five Pacific island nations – Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Vanuatu and Fiji – to upgrade their economic partnership and “boost trade, attract investment, and accelerate industrialisation through flexible trade negotiations”, China’s Ministry of Commerce said at that time.
While China is known for using its trade clout and megaproject expertise to woo developing nations, it is also trying out a more niche strategy to win over locals in the South Pacific.
After Pacific leaders shelved a sweeping regional trade and security deal proposed by China in 2022, Beijing began to deliver “small and beautiful” projects in the Pacific, following President Xi Jinping’s pledges at a Belt and Road Initiative forum in 2023.
A popular buzzword in China’s foreign diplomacy, “small and beautiful” refers to low-budget, small-scale projects that focus on public welfare and communities’ needs.
For instance, China donated and installed hundreds of solar street lights across Nauru and Kiribati, and sent medical teams to remote villages and outlying islands.
In Nauru, a tiny coral reef nation suffering from the devastating environmental impact of decades of mining, Chinese agriculture specialists have introduced soilless cultivation factories, allowing residents who once relied on expensive imports to access locally grown vegetables.
In May, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown joined Chinese officials in Wuzhou to launch the MV Tuitui Moana, a 43-metre (141-foot) multipurpose vessel built in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region to improve transport links and cargo delivery among multiple islands.
Xu of Sun Yat-sen University said delivering tangible local improvements could help secure the public support necessary for sustained engagement.
“These projects are insulated from unpredictable political shifts, such as a government changing hands or a former opposition party coming to power,” he said.
This could also be more cost-effective, Xu said, adding that maintenance costs for large-scale projects – such as highways, ports and shipyards – had been quite high for local governments.
At the same time, such small projects were less likely to trigger caution and pushback from regional powers like Australia and New Zealand, avoiding Western anxieties that Beijing’s infrastructure investments were a form of strategic pre-positioning, he added.
“In this sense, looking at the situation in reverse, China’s future relations and aid programmes with Pacific island nations are likely to have to pivot entirely towards ‘small and beautiful’ initiatives,” Xu said.
Yet, China’s strategic shifts have not gone unanswered.
Australia has reinforced its Pacific ties and ramped up funding following China’s reported attempt to establish a permanent military base in Vanuatu in 2018 and its successful 2022 security agreement with the Solomon Islands.


For the first time since 2021, Canberra overtook Beijing as the dominant lender and infrastructure investor across the Pacific in 2024, providing about 37 per cent of all development spending across the region, according to estimates published by the Lowy Institute on July 28.
China accounted for 6 per cent of the regional development flows, the report said.


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Illustration: Henry Wong


Prime Minister of Vanuatu Jotham Napat (left) and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Canberra, Australia, on June 29. Photo: EPA

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi holds talks in Beijing on Tuesday with Rick Houenipwela, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of the Solomon Islands. Photo: Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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Foreign ministers Wang Yi and Rick Houenipwela meet in Beijing. Photo: China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi (centre) poses with representatives from the region during the opening of the Island States Ocean Summit in Tokyo on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

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Chinese President Xi Jinping and New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon ahead of their meeting  in Beijing on Friday. Photo: Xinhua via AP

The Chinese and New Zealand delegations hold talks in Beijing on Friday. Photo: Xinhua via AP

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Wellington in June 2024. Photo: AFP

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Prime Minister Mark Brown of the Cook Islands is in China for a week-long state visit until Sunday. Photo: AP

Cook Islands’ Prime Minister Mark Brown (third right) is shown around the National Deep Sea Centre in Qingdao, Shandong province, earlier this week. Photo: Facebook via Reuters 

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Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a deal in 2022 which raised concerns with Australia and the US. Now a UK admiral has warned over China’s influence with Pacific Island nations. Photo: Xinhua

Noting China’s dominance at sea, Royal Navy Rear Admiral James Parkin has warned the US and its allies not to pressure Pacific Island nations to choose sides between China and the West. Photo: www.gov.uk

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As Australia expands defence pacts in the region, Beijing courts local communities with ‘small and beautiful’ aid


As Australia expands defence pacts in the region, Beijing courts local communities with ‘small and beautiful’ aid.


.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}As Australia expands defence pacts in the region, Beijing courts local communities with ‘small and beautiful’ aid

As Australia expands defence pacts in the region, Beijing courts local communities with ‘small and beautiful’ aid