The Pacific can learn from the challenges ASEAN faces as it feels the heat from increasing competition between China and the United States in the region.
On the South China Sea, ASEAN’s ability to mount a unified response to Chinese behaviour that undermines some members’ security and sovereignty has been impeded by others more closely aligned with Beijing.
Western nations worry that growing Chinese aid and investment is a vector for Beijing’s influence. No doubt it is. But realistically, Western governments are limited in what they can do to caution Pacific nations about Beijing, while still appearing to have their development interests in mind.Those who know the Pacific well would certainly say it’s a waste of diplomatic capital trying to lean on Pacific governments to deter them from expanding commercial and aid relationships with China.
Across the Indo-Pacific, the stakes for democracy, and the role democratic values play in determining engagement with China, aren’t as clear-cut as the “arc of autocracies” rhetoric would have it. But the South Pacific is one place where healthy democratic systems will probably be a bulwark against the excesses of Chinese investors’ and state bodies’ behaviour.
One issue Powles and Wallis raise is that mechanisms such as the Partners in the Blue Pacific initiative, designed to increase co-operation between the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Japan, risks sidelining or duplicating regional solutions out of a desire to write China out.
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