Australia’s Worries Grow as China Expands

 

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

The Solomon Islands saw anti-government riots in late November. The protesters, from the island of Malaita, opposed a 2019 decision to end ties with Taiwan and establish links with China. This led to an independence referendum last year which the national government dismissed as illegitimate. 

Australia and the Solomon Islands have a 2017 bilateral security treaty and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has deployed peacekeeping forces to the Islands.

This is no surprise. Security is the largest component of the Australian-South Pacific set of relationships. Many of these initiatives fall under the Defence Cooperation Program and the Pacific Maritime Security Program, through which Australia has conducted patrol boat and associated equipment transfers to partner countries.

This has aimed at boosting their ability to monitor sovereign resources like fisheries, as well as to generate maritime intelligence to be shared with Canberra. Australia also participates in the annual South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting, which deals with shared security threats. The area is Australia’s “Arc of Instability.”

Australian security forces have conducted multiple regional interventions in recent decades, particularly in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville province. Australia has partnered with Papua New Guinea on the modernisation of a naval base on Lombrum Island, binding that country closer to the Australian security agenda.

Canberra also frequently conducts humanitarian work. The South Pacific is disproportionately exposed to drought, cyclones, floods, large waves, and volcanic activity. The Australian military lifts supplies and personnel to offset the effects of these disasters. Free-trade agreements also link Australia to ten South Pacific nations.

But some states are uncomfortable with the Australian-led status quo, particularly given the political and economic influence it entails. Fiji, a major trading partner and source of foreign investment for Australia, has been a central figure in this discontent, arising from that country’s troubled relationships with the international community.

It was expelled from the Commonwealth in 1987 following a series of coups and was only readmitted in 1997. More recently, Australian sanctions were applied in the wake of the 2006 coup installing the current leader, Frank Bainimarama, into power, and Commonwealth membership was suspended again in 2010 following failures to host elections there that year.

Consequently, Fiji has pursued greater independence in its foreign affairs and has sought to broaden relations with external powers, particularly China. Beijing is now a large donor to the island country, as well as a signatory in various cooperative aid and security-related programmes.

Beijing’s no-strings-attached approach to aid has ensured that it has become an increasingly important aid, economic and diplomatic partner not only with Fiji, but also with countries like Kiribati, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. This worries Canberra, given China’s increased naval assertiveness in the South China Sea.

When Morrison became Australia’s prime minister three years ago, he insisted that the country could maintain close ties with China, its largest trading partner, while working with the United States, its main security ally. “Australia doesn’t have to choose,” he insisted.

That is no longer the case. Following years of sharply deteriorating relations with Beijing, after Canberra blocked Chinese investment from several sensitive areas and Beijing imposed economic sanctions on a variety of Australian exports, Australia recently joined the U.S. and Great Britain in the creation of a new security pact, to counter China.

The new alliance, announced on Sept. 15, is the most significant security arrangement between the three nations since World War Two. It will let Australia build nuclear-powered submarines, using technology provided by Washington.

Australia will become just the seventh nation in the world to operate nuclear-powered submarines, after the U.S., Britain, France, China, India and Russia.

This might be seen as a modified version of the now-defunct eight-nation Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, which was dissolved in 1977, after the Vietnam War.

It would also be “inconceivable” for Australia not to join the U.S. should Washington take action to defend Taiwan, Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton said on Nov. 13. “This is about giving the Australian Defence Force a capable edge in the region,” according to Richard Maude, at Asia Society Australia.

China has condemned the AUKUS agreement as “extremely irresponsible.” It accused the three countries of a “Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice.”