Asian Angle | US-China relations: Asean needs to pay attention to great power rivalry in the Pacific

Pacific island nations like Kiribati, Palau, Solomon Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia have been making headlines recently in a way they rarely have before.

In the past, mass media reports on the Pacific largely focused on rising sea levels or touristic exotica, but the region has since emerged as an arena of fierce geopolitical competition between China and the United States and its allies.

China has been cultivating relations with South Pacific nation-states for years, both through aid and investment. No less than nine of the 17 members of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) are part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative – a tenth, Kiribati, said earlier this month it was withdrawing from the PIF with immediate effect.

The US and its allies Australia and New Zealand – both PIF members themselves – have traditionally been the dominant influence in the Pacific, but China’s unprecedented attempt to establish a security foothold in the region has set off alarm bells in Washington and Canberra.

In April, Beijing confirmed it had signed an agreement for security cooperation with the Solomon Islands, prompting Washington to dispatch its Asian security tsar Kurt Campbell, coordinator of the US’ Indo-Pacific Strategy, to Honiara days later to meet Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.

Although no details of the discussions were released, it’s likely Campbell warned Sogavare that any Chinese military presence in the Solomons would be totally unacceptable to the US, and no doubt emphasised that Washington would henceforth pay close attention to the island state. Already in February, the State Department had announced its plans to re-establish a US embassy in the capital Honiara.

Sogavare has given his assurances that there will be no Chinese military facility on the islands, but concerns remain in Australia and the US about Beijing’s role in the Solomons’ internal security and the possible incremental growth of a Chinese military presence.