How China Is Building a Backdoor Military Network in the Pacific

Dual‑use ports, runways, and telecom lines in 10 Pacific nations could help the PLA leapfrog U.S. defenses and threaten shipping between Hawaii and Australia.

An airfield, buildings, and structures are seen on the artificial island built by China in Mischief Reef on Oct. 25, 2022, in Spratly Islands, South China Sea. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

Analysis

A terse emergency radio broadcast picked up by a commercial flight was the first warning that the Chinese regime was about to start live-fire drills under its flight path between Australia and New Zealand.

Within hours, Australian authorities had been notified and air traffic controllers had rerouted 49 commercial flights between Australia and New Zealand to keep them out of harm’s way. 

The incident on Feb. 21—which rattled officials in Canberra and Wellington—offers just a glimpse into Beijing’s far-reaching plans in the Pacific, according to China watchers and recent analysis. 

An April report from the Prague‑based research group Sinopsis warns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is quietly bankrolling a dense web of “dual‑use” seaports, airstrips, and telecom networks in at least 10 Pacific Island nations, covering roughly 3,000 miles and forming a network of strategic nodes between Australia and the U.S. territory of American Samoa in Polynesia, just 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.

Built for providing development aid, the dual‑use assets can be flipped to military use “at a moment’s notice,” the report states, giving the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) a ready‑made logistics chain thousands of miles from home. Experts said the report’s mapping will sharpen vigilance in Washington, Canberra, and Tokyo and force island governments to weigh sovereignty costs before cutting their next ribbon.

U.S. commanders gauge Pacific power according to who controls three defensive arcs—all currently controlled by the United States and its allies. The first island chain—Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines—boxes China’s forces near its coast. The second island chain, anchored by Guam, stores U.S. munitions and reinforcements. The thinly populated third chain, running south from Hawaii to American Samoa and Fiji, shields sea lanes that link Asia and North America.

Beijing’s strategy, according to Western planners, is to deny U.S. access inside the first chain, contest the second, and operate freely inside the third. And planting ostensibly “civilian” facilities in the South Pacific has helped the PLA vault past the first two island chains without the need for an aircraft carrier armada.

Network of Seaports, Airfields, Telecoms

Exhibit A is Luganville Wharf in Vanuatu, a South Pacific nation located along the third chain. A little more than 1,000 miles northeast of Australia, it was a major U.S. Navy base during World War II.

A $97 million Chinese loan in 2014 lengthened the pier to 361 meters (0.22 miles), large enough for cruise liners but also, crucially, for destroyers or supply ships.

In December 2023, locals spotted men in PLA navy‑style uniforms clearing land behind Luganville’s airport, according to Sinopsis. The research group has warned that a Chinese outpost there could allow the PLA to disrupt air and sea traffic between the United States and Australia while monitoring joint military exercises in nearby waters.

“Beijing is laying the groundwork for overseas bases and logistics hubs under the guise of development aid,” Shen Ming‑shih, a fellow at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times. “A wharf in peacetime becomes a resupply point in a crisis.”

Shen noted that most such Chinese projects sit in places with negligible commerce but high strategic value, proving that geopolitics, not commerce, drives the loans.

China’s taste for “fishing parks” follows the same script.

On Daru Island in Papua New Guinea—roughly 120 miles from Australia’s northern Cape York—Beijing in 2020 offered to build a $200 million “fishery industrial park” on the tiny outpost, even though locals concede there are few fish.

“A fish base there makes no commercial sense,” Shen said. “Its value is military—perfect for monitoring Australia or even interfering with shipping in the Torres Strait.”

The report groups Daru with Vanuatu’s Luganville and several ports in Fiji and Tonga as top intelligence-gathering sites for PLA planners.

Airfields in the region tell a similar story.

Chinese firms have upgraded or built 17 Pacific runways that can now take heavy transports. One sits on Kanton Island in Kiribati, roughly 1,600 miles southwest of Hawaii. Another, in Fiji’s remote Bua Province, was lengthened well beyond local needs.

China’s aviation investments scarcely align with economic engagement, the report notes, calling them a push by the CCP to penetrate the third island chain.

“Ports, airports, even undersea cables—they may look civilian but can be militarized overnight,” Shen said. “That shifts the balance east of Guam and complicates U.S. planning.”

Telecom networks round out Beijing’s dual‑use toolkit.

Huawei and other Chinese telecom giants have laid submarine communication cables, erected cell towers, installed satellite ground stations, and built national ID databases from Papua New Guinea to Tonga. Contracts often grant Chinese state entities data-sharing rights, embedding soft power—state-backed influence through media and technology—and potentially enabling espionage within Pacific nations’ essential services.

“Digital infrastructure is absolutely part of the new great game,” Sun Kuo‑hsiang, an international affairs professor at Taiwan’s Nanhua University, told The Epoch Times. “If China controls the networks, it can harvest data, sway politics, and secure its own military communications without firing a shot.”

Australia blocked a Huawei cable to the Solomon Islands in 2018 and financed an alternative link, but Huawei equipment still blankets much of the region.

Island Nations’ Debts, Politics; US and Allies Catching Up

Island leaders accept Beijing’s money because it arrives fast and yields projects that incumbents can tout at election time. Tonga, Samoa, and Vanuatu now owe more to China’s state-owned Export–Import Bank of China (Eximbank) than to any other creditor, the report states. Eximbank is also a major financier of the CCP’s widely criticized Belt and Road Initiative.

When Tonga sought relief from China for its ballooning debt, observers warned of a looming “debt trap” with which the CCP could force Tonga to grant it strategic concessions, such as trading land or long‑term leases for repayment.

Sun said Beijing’s leverage extends to ballot boxes across the Pacific.

“Big checks help incumbents campaign on new roads or ports,” he said. “Beijing then has a friendly elite who protects its projects.”

The pattern surfaced in the Solomon Islands, which severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 2019 after receiving substantial Chinese aid. In 2022, it signed a secret security pact that permitted Chinese naval visits—a move that rattled Canberra and Washington.

Western capitals, long accused of neglecting the Pacific, are now racing to offer alternatives.

Australia’s “Pacific Step‑Up” is financing rival fiber‑optic cables, energy grids, and maritime patrol boats. The United States has reopened its embassy in the Solomon Islands, signed new defense agreements with Papua New Guinea, and launched a multilateral aid program under the “Partners in the Blue Pacific” framework. Japan is opening embassies and funding port upgrades, while India is courting Pacific leaders with scholarships and solar projects.

Shen said the Sinopsis findings will alert and “encourage allies to offer quicker, cleaner deals” to secure the Pacific Island nations’ cooperation. The study urges Five Eyes partners (the intelligence alliance consisting of the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) to share satellite imagery and rehearse scenarios in which the PLA activates Pacific assets during a Taiwan crisis.

Pacific governments are not powerless. Samoa cancelled a $100 million Chinese megaport in 2021, citing concerns about debt traps and sovereignty. Fiji paused a Chinese island lease after local protests. Even Vanuatu’s leaders deny any plan for a Chinese base, aware of the backlash the Solomon Islands’ pro-CCP Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare faced. Sogavare has since resigned.

Yet their resistance has limits.

“Most islands still need infrastructure,” Sun said. “If Western offers stall in paperwork, Beijing’s money wins by default.”

A brief shutdown of Tasman Sea airspace in February demonstrated how easily Chinese military movements can disrupt civilian traffic thousands of miles from the Chinese mainland. If Beijing stitches its Pacific projects into a seamless logistics chain, the U.S. Navy’s ability to surge forces—or simply keep trade routes open—will come under strain.

“Control the Southwest Pacific and you threaten the lifeline between the United States and its allies,” Shen said. “China learned that from World War II; now, it’s applying the lesson with ports and runways instead of carriers and artificial islands.”

Whether Washington and its partners can match Beijing’s pace—and whether Pacific nations can secure development funds without surrendering their autonomy—will determine how freely allied forces move when the next crisis erupts.