Australia has been on an extraordinary diplomatic frenzy across the Pacific over the past year – and especially over the past month – as the result of mounting concerns over China’s growing interest in the region.
Both Australia and New Zealand are more and more concerned that Beijing has military ambitions for the South Pacific and holds few qualms about moving into the region, as evidenced by its launch of a ballistic missile into the waters off Tuvalu earlier this month.
That missile launch came on the same day – almost certainly a coincidence – that Australia and Fiji forged the Ocean of Peace Alliance, a new defence pact, and the Vuvale Union security and development pact, backed by Australian government spending of more than $1 billion over a decade.
Prime ministers Anthony Albanese of Australia and Sitiveni Rabuka of Fiji hailed the agreements.
“The significance of this agreement cannot be underestimated for what it means for our two great nations, and we are both stronger because of it,” Albanese said at a press conference in Suva. “The Ocean of Peace Alliance introduces a mutual defence obligation and there’s no higher obligation than to come to each other’s aid at a time of need.”
The following day, he travelled to the Solomon Islands, which is expected to sign a bilateral treaty with Australia soon after electing Matthew Wale as its new prime minister. Wale is promising to “review” the Pacific nation’s contentious security agreement with China.
That’s in addition to agreements with Tuvalu, Nauru, Samoa and Papua New Guinea – the latter involving a rugby league deal.
“It’s extraordinary; just the breadth of it,” says Stephen Dziedzic, foreign affairs reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, who accompanied Albanese on his recent trip.
“You see Australia doing things that, quite frankly, would have been completely inconceivable a couple of years ago,” he says. “If you’d told me, say back in 2020, that Australia would sponsor an NRL team from PNG to the tune of $600 million in … an attempt to stop China from getting a military presence in the country, I would have told you that you were hallucinating, and yet that’s exactly what Australia has done.”
While Australia has humanitarian concerns in the region, China is a major factor for the flurry, Dziedzic says. In addition to building up its diplomatic and development initiatives in the region, Beijing has also shown interest in having a permanent military presence in the South Pacific.
“There’s no way Australia would have poured the amount of time, energy, and money that it has into the Pacific were it not animated by a deep anxiety about China’s presence in the region and the prospect of China getting a military foothold in the region,” Dziedzic says.
This would be alarming for both Australia and New Zealand, which have long considered their isolation to be their best protection.
While New Zealand’s efforts haven’t been as spectacular or ingenious as Australia’s, there has been a noticeable increase in our activity, says Anna Powles, an expert on the Pacific and associate professor in the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey University.
“New Zealand foreign ministers, including current Foreign Minister Winston Peters, have all said explicitly that New Zealand is seriously concerned about China’s engagement in the Pacific, that it sees China as potentially destabilising, and certainly the recent testing of the submarine-launched ballistic missile is an example of that,” Powles says.
Peters has described his previous year as the most intensive year of Pacific diplomacy undertaken by a New Zealand political leader, and 69 percent of New Zealand’s development spending is directed to the region.
“But what has been really interesting for those of us who spend time thinking about security issues in the Pacific, is the way in which there’s been this shift or sort of a distinct sharpening or hardening of New Zealand’s approach in the region,” Powles says. “We’re not really used to New Zealand playing hardball.”
She cited the disagreement with the Cook Islands over a secret deal it signed with China last year.
New Zealand had not been informed of the details or consulted ahead of time, despite the Cook Islands as a realm country being expected to do so on constitutional matters, defence and security. Peters suspended almost $30 million in annual funding as a result, reinstating it earlier this year when New Zealand and the Cook Islands signed a defence and security declaration.
China has overlapping interests in the Pacific: It wants votes at the United Nations, part of the reason it has been peeling off Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic partners in the region. It also wants access to fisheries, logging and deep sea minerals, Powles says.
“Then, of course, there’s that broader strategic competition that’s taking place.”
Powell says that Pacific states are “not passive actors” and are “using this competition to diversify their partnerships to negotiate better agreements and increase their diplomatic leverage as well”.
“There are growing concerns about the implications for Pacific countries to be able to continue to balance China and the West effectively.”
This Saturday episode is made with funding from the Peter M. Acland Foundation.
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