Solomon Islands pact cements China's Pacific power status
Recent controversy is just the first step in a long-running struggle
Richard McGregor is a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute.
The announcement by China and the Solomon Islands in late March that their two governments had concluded a bilateral security agreement has been a teachable moment on multiple fronts.
Among many lessons, the most important is that the world can now confidently ignore Beijing's regular denials that it has no interest in securing a military presence in the Pacific.
In 2018, when the Australian media reported on the possibility of Beijing establishing a naval facility on the island of Vanuatu, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman called the idea "sheer fiction." But there is no denying the truth of the deal with the Solomon Islands, initially leaked by disgruntled government critics in the pacific nation and now confirmed by both countries.
Negotiated at speed after the Chinese Embassy and ethnic Chinese-owned shops were trashed in rioting late last year, the pact lists Beijing's requests in detail, from the sorts of weaponry that Chinese police and paramilitary can carry to the access that their visiting ships would enjoy.
Beijing's intentions are clear enough: to place armed police on the ground as a precursor to obtaining a strategic beachhead in the Pacific, a region hitherto dominated by the U.S. and its allies for more than 70 years.
More than that, Beijing's Solomons deal, if it is carried through, would be a political blow to the standing enjoyed by the traditional powers in the Pacific and give China leverage elsewhere across that vast ocean.
The big question now facing opponents of the agreement in Washington, Canberra and Wellington and, more quietly, in a number of Pacific countries is what to do about the deal.
The strategic locale of the Solomon Islands has historic weight, as anyone visiting the waters near the Solomons capital, Honiara, can readily see with their own eyes. Multiple wrecks of Japanese and allied naval vessels sit partially submerged along the coastline, a legacy of the pivotal Battle of Guadalcanal in World War II.
The allies and the Japanese fought over the Solomons in the belief that whichever side controlled the islands could use the position to get a stranglehold on Australia, Hawaii and the west coast of the U.S. and control the supply lines crisscrossing the ocean. The same strategic rationale holds today.
Australia and the U.S. have responded to news of the agreement with alacrity. Rather than simply opposing the deal, their initial aim seems to be to try to scuttle it altogether. Although the agreement has been initialed by officials, it has not been formally ratified by either country.
The U.S. and Australia have, or are in the process of dispatching, senior emissaries to the island to make their views known to Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare. New Zealand is likely to follow.
The deal has been a wake-up call for New Zealand, which has been highly critical in private and occasionally in public of Australia's more hawkish China policy. In this case, Wellington has strongly opposed the Solomons plan.
Australia's Pacific Minister, Zed Seselja, interrupted his country's heated election campaign to make a rushed trip to the Solomons in mid-April, where he asked the government "respectfully to consider not signing the agreement."
While keeping their counsel in public, Fiji's Frank Bainimarama and Papua New Guinea's James Marape also phoned Sogavare to caution him about the dangers of going ahead with a China pact. The fruits of these governments' collective efforts are as yet unclear, but Sogavare, who is feeling cornered, is showing no sign that he will back off.
Beijing has spent considerable time and money cultivating Sogavare. The Solomons leader was pivotal in his country's decision to switch diplomatic recognition away from Taipei to Beijing in 2019. Australia remains by far the largest aid donor in the region and the primary guarantor of security, but by itself, as the case of the Solomons illustrates, such metrics are not enough.
Pacific island nations naturally want to diversify their economic and security partners. Canny players of the sovereignty card, they know that in doing so, they can extract more out of their traditional partners along the way.
Although it has been lending less money in recent years than in the previous decade, Beijing remains an important economic partner for Pacific nations like the Solomons, whatever happens on the aid front. Beijing also has another card in its pack that Australia and like-minded countries struggle to play -- the tactic of what political scientists like to call "elite capture."
In everyday language, Beijing targets leaders of these nations with access, trips, flattery and other incentives, all tools which it wields with a great deal more confidence and freedom than Western capitals. In Beijing, Pacific leaders are greeted with military ceremonies and get to meet one-on-one with Xi Jinping. In Washington, it is more likely to be coffee with a lowly State Department official.
In the Solomons, Beijing has continued with a policy used by Taiwan of providing so-called "constituency payments" to MPs, but with one difference. While Taiwan paid the money to individual MPs, the opposition in the Solomons now claims that China makes the payments to Sogavare himself, who is then responsible for distributing the money.
Such tactics will not and cannot be matched by Western governments. Whether they can find other ways to dissuade Sogavare from signing the China deal is yet to be seen. Whatever happens, as a regional power, China is here to stay in the Pacific. The tussle over the Solomons is just the first episode in a long-running struggle.