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

After the Quad, Aukus and other US moves, Beijing wrong-footed Washington and its allies by aiming for the Indo-Pacific Strategy’s soft underbelly

The US responded in kind, but the contest is not over – and its significance for the security of East and Southeast Asia cannot be overstated

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Leaders pose for a group photo on July 14 at the Pacific Islands Forum summit in Fiji. Photo: AAP Image via AP

Published: 9:00am, 31 Jul 2022

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.

Anthony Albanese and Jacinda Ardern, the respective prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, pictured on July 7. Photo: EPA-EFE

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.