Pacific experts have panned claims that new Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong singlehandedly took down Beijing’s efforts to sign 10 island nations onto a sweeping economic and security pact.
James Cox, director of Pacific advocacy group Peacifica Australia, said any suggestion that a quick visit from a minister from the newly elected Labor government could shift the balance in the Pacific was “absurd.”
“The change in government will certainly have been noted with interest by Pacific leaders, but that’s about it,” he wrote in a post on Twitter, noting that the situation in the Pacific was far more complex.
“Two points show that things aren’t as simple as Sen. Wong going to Fiji and saving the day: 1. The [Federated States of Micronesia’s] president’s great cautionary letter was written well before Wong came to Fiji; 2. Fiji’s [prime minister] is one of the more pro-China Pacific leaders.”
His comments come after Wong was praised by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) global affairs editor, John Lyons, for having a “blinder” in recent diplomatic efforts.
“China had this incredible lunge at the Pacific—10 nations—it was all carefully planned. Australia appeared to not know much about that, Penny Wong, I think, has at least rescued it, at least for the moment, and she’s playing the card of climate change,” he told ABC on June 2.
“I think it’s trying to salvage one of the worst foreign policy blunders we’ve seen in this country for many years; we almost lost the Pacific, in a sense, to Chinese influence,” he said. “It’s saying to the Pacific, we’re interested in you, we’re listening, and secondly, playing the card that this new government has of climate change. Clearly, they want to change direction.”
Similar praise was meted out by Belinda Barnet, lecturer in media and communications at Swinburne University in Melbourne.
“This did not happen by magic or by chance. It happened because we put an intelligent, diplomatic, and strategically-minded adult in charge of foreign relations,” she added. “We do not deserve Penny Wong. But God, I’m glad we have her.”
The comments, however, were not received well.
Foreign affairs reporter for the ABC, Stephen Dziedzic, said Pacific nations had agency and that “all the intel” suggested the Pacific leaders declined to push ahead because of internal disagreements and not because of “Australian arm-twisting/advocacy.”
However, leaked documents emerged to reveal that the Chinese regime had ambitions exceeding that of bilateral ties, with Beijing proposing a sweeping 10-nation economic and security bloc in the region.
The China-Pacific Island Countries Common Development Vision envisioned the CCP working even closer with Pacific leaders in the fields of free trade, fisheries, pandemic response, and sensitive areas such as security, cyber, and maritime mapping.
“Chinese control over our communications infrastructure, our ocean territory and the resources within them, and our security space, aside from impacts on our sovereignty, is that it increases the chances of China getting into conflict with Australia, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand,” he said.
Heston Russell, a former special forces operative who also spent years working behind the scenes in the South Pacific region, said Pacific nations had major problems with corruption and that Beijing had largely succeeded in locking in relationships with some Pacific leaders (elite capture).
He said democratic nations should avoid going “pound for pound” with Beijing and instead pivot and focus on grassroots engagement.
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