Pacific island nations have made the right decision by withdrawing from China’s proposed regional economic and security deal, Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr. said on Monday, pushing back on Beijing’s plans in the region.
“We already have security in our region. But bringing more actors and more players in just creates possible conflict, which then I think brings a security risk, and I think that’s the concern that we all have because we lived through WWII and we didn’t want that to be the case again,” he added.
Beijing’s China-Pacific Island Countries Common Development Vision, which was leaked to the press last week, proposed China-led cooperation across the 10 Pacific nations in free trade, fisheries, security, cyber, and maritime mapping, and would have been a significant step forward for the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions in the region.
Whipps stated that Pacific island nations feared the security deal with China could further pave the way to a new cold war, considering the situation facing the islands as the battleground during World War II.
Citing climate change as the region’s greatest challenge, Whipps noted that Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama made a significant move in “standing up” and calling on China to make a stronger commitment to climate action.
“If [China] wants to help us, the biggest security threat right now for the Pacific islands is climate change,” he added.
“Sea level rise is an invasion and it'll create climate refugees, destroy cultures that have existed for thousands of years, and people’s identity. It’s so important [to] hold large countries accountable to their action,” Whipps said, adding that Australia has stepped up its commitments on climate change.
Speaking of his nation’s ties with Taiwan, Whipps said that Palau will continue to support the self-ruled island and recognize its sovereignty, maintaining Palau’s stance of being “friend to all and enemy to none.”
“China has told us, ‘You need to just sever relations with Taiwan and only have a one-China policy.’ But our policy has always been that we welcome everyone and no one should tell us who our friend should be,” he noted.
Palau’s diplomatic ties with Taiwan resulted in a plummet in Chinese tourists to the nation, who accounted for 70 percent of the tourism sector in 2015. Whipps said that China used a “carrot and the stick approach” to force the island nation into severing its ties with Taiwan.
He noted that some Pacific island nations had switched allegiance from Taiwan to China as a result of the loss our tourists and the promises offered by the communists in Beijing, given their wish to enhance the lives of their people.
“When you’re presented with those challenges, what China offers becomes very attractive because, as they told me, ‘The sky is the limit’,” he added.
Aside from Palau, only three other Pacific island nations—the Marshall Islands, Nauru, and Tuvalu—still recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation. In November 2019, Tuvalu rejected offers from China to build artificial islands to help it cope with rising sea levels.
The Solomon Islands signed a security deal with Beijing last month, which other nations feared would allow China to establish a military base 1,700 kilometers off the Australian coast and destabilize the Indo-Pacific region.
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