China's intriguing moves

Michael Field

MILITARY STRATEGISTS LIKE WAR-GAMING and the growing number of Chinese in the South Pacific are producing intriguing scenarios.

One has Beijing deploying anti-ship cruise missiles on atolls across the South Pacific to deny the United States Navy access as it might race across to help Taiwan ahead of a Chinese invasion.

Making a presence...the Chinese embassy in Suva.

In part a variation of the old “yellow peril” warning, it is on the table as the South Pacific, once under European hegemony, attracts growing Chinese interest. Despite overwhelming Australia-New Zealand domination, Wellington and Canberra talk darkly of a regional security threat.

Fourteen Pacific Islands states have found themselves objects of desire for China and Taiwan. The most valuable item on sale? International votes.

For Taipei and Beijing, they are priceless-Pacific votes are cheaper and easier to get than anywhere else in the world.

The two Chinas, as well as Japan and Malaysia, are also engaged in a battle for control of resources; fish, timber and minerals. The long abandoned Panguna mine in Papua New Guinea's Bougainville still holds a lot of untouched copper. The South Pacific's seabed, known to be rich in minerals, particularly in the Cook Islands waters, is the kind of place worth having in the bank for several generations yet to come.

Looming behind is another perceived threat: illegal Chinese migrants and Triad gangs.

In Papua New Guinea, authorities believe that around 10,000 Chinese have been smuggled in, while in Fiji, authorities believe that in the last three years around 7000 illegal Chinese have come in, many on fishing boats. The story is repeated across the Pacific.
Papua New Guinea's Police Minister Bire Kimisopa early this year claimed that Triads were running illegal businesses, money laundering and were corrupting police “right to the top”.

“Chinese mafia have bought off officials throughout the system and several Asian gangs were colluding and targeting government officials,” he said in a report on illegal activities within the PNG police,

Tonga sold citizenship to Chinese in the 1990s, not expecting them to show up. Chinese now own 70 percent of the businesses in Nuku'alofa.

Chinese were the key players in one of the world's largest ever heroin smuggling operations in Suva, which saw 357 kilogrammes smuggled in. Two years later, a $753-million crystal methamphetamine factory was busted and its Chinese gang associates arrested.
Fiji police have yet to solve the savage gangland murder of four Chinese men and a Fijian over a shark-fin smuggling racket.

Fiji Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes claimed Chinese organised crime in Fiji was out of control. “This is a frightening example of trans-national organised crime elements using Fiji as a staging ground for their illegal activities. Increasingly, we are seeing these elements coming to Fiji and joining up with local organised criminal gangs.”

A Solomon Islands cabinet minister, Clement Rojumana, is facing corruption charges over selling citizenship certificates to Chinese.
University of the South Pacific Emeritus Professor Ron Crocombe opened up the “long sad story”, as he puts it, by claiming China is engaged in heavy interference in the South Pacific.

As author of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat's security reports for leaders, he comes with clout.

Crocombe, about to publish a new book “Asia and the Pacific Islands”, sees connections between illegal migrants, the gangs and Chinese political and diplomatic activities in the region.

“That pattern is now spreading throughout the Pacific Islands. Once the numbers increase, so does China's leverage, for China will defend them. It is in China's interests that they are here.”

Crocombe claimed that in the Pacific “China pursues its self-interest more forcefully, interferes more in Pacific Islands' internal affairs, and has more strings on its aid than any other country.”

He says China's “greed to swallow Taiwan is a big factor in its aid to the Cook Islands”.

He noted that the China versus Taiwan battle had caused a political turmoil in Kiribati, Tuvalu where Prime Minister Saufatu Sopo'anga lost his job in a China related issue, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.

Indigenous Taiwanese were Austronesians, as were the Cook Islanders.

“If Cook Islands' leaders are happy to help crush their fellow Austronesians in Taiwan in order to gain some glory, ego massages, free trips and perks, and money to help their elections-one can understand that. But China's claim to Taiwan is simple greed for power.”

China aided the Cooks because they “figured that Cook Islands politicians are easy to manipulate and that it is the cheapest vote China can buy in the 30 or so international organisations to which the Cook Islands belongs.”

Chinese shops...now a common sight in Suva, Fiji’s capital.

Michael Powles, a former New Zealand Pacific ambassador who went on to head the New Zealand Embassy in Beijing, told ISLANDS BUSINESS that some of the reactions border on racism.

“I heard one Pacific academic said that while the Pacific had got used to western crooks and swindlers over the years, the difference with the Chinese was that they didn't even subscribe to a moral order such as the west's Judeo-Christian inheritance. Had he never heard of Confucius?”

Powles says the region had to adapt to the Chinese involvement in the region.

“If the region is prepared to take notice of what's happening and take a few sensible measures (like ensuring Pacific countries adopt sensible policies on the issue of visas and passports, and the enforcement of law in respect of itinerant Chinese businesspeople) and look for opportunities which the trend can provide, then there would be as much cause for satisfaction.”

China, he says, more than any other major power, goes through the motion of acknowledging the “sovereign equality of states”.

Powles believes Taiwan is losing its battle for recognition globally and in the Pacific, “and most people know that”.
Taiwan was the core of China's power play, says aid expert Oli Brown, of the Geneva-based International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

“China is playing an increasingly complex geo-political game in the South Pacific with a few different objectives: to counter the influence of Taiwan, to get access to the natural resources it needs to fuel its rapid economic growth and to make its mark on the world arena,” Brown told ISLANDS BUSINESS.

Taiwan, which is also active in the region, needs to get a legal personality by winning recognition from a critical mass of countries.

“Small Pacific nations are a 'cost effective' way to do this. It costs less to influence an island state of 200,000 people than a larger nation. Pacific leaders are rather good at playing one country off against the other. The situation is not dissimilar to the Cold War strategic chess game of aid to buy influence between the United States and USSR.

TACKLING CHINA: KIRIBATI As 38-year-old Yang Liwei soared into space to become China's first astronaut in October 2003, it was a triumph for Chinese technological might and a satellite tracking base in Kiribati. China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General built a base behind the airport on Tarawa atoll after signing a secret deal in 1997 with President Teburoro Tito. The base caused speculation because there were often dozens of technicians on the atoll and the road from the airport to the base was the best in the nation. One day a couple of United States Navy carrier jets buzzed the base. Right on the equator, Kiribati is a good spot for launching geo-stationary earth orbit satellites. Several times a year, California-based Sea Launch tows a converted oil platform to launch satellites near Kiribati. The Japanese space shuttle project, currently stalled, will use Kiritimati Atoll. Tarawa is 1000 kilometres south of Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, a United States army strategic and tactical missile testing range. Tracking dishes at the Chinese base caught telemetry from missiles fired from California to Kwajalein in the continued testing. In the presidential elections in 2003, the base became a key issue between rival candidates, brothers Anote and Harry Tong. They're part-Chinese. Chinese Ambassador Shuxue Ma got himself involved in the election campaign with cash donations to organisations linked to Harry Tong. Anote Tong won and the satellite base was closed, just a month after Yang had gone into space. No other Chinese astronaut has gone up since. Kiribati also diplomatically recognises Taiwan. But Chinese diplomats on he island would not go and two years on a group of four men maintains the closed Chinese Embassy. Anote Tong believes Beijing wants to change the Kiribati government and has left diplomats there so they can quickly take over from Taiwan and restore the satellite base. “We have to keep an eye on what their real role is and what role they are playing. It is very dangerous.”

“The American-based civilian intelligence service Stratfor has monitored Chinese moves. The Pacific strategy of China is multifaceted, ranging from keeping votes away from Taiwan (a political issue) to tracking stations and listening posts to future security concerns,” Rodger Baker, Stratfor's director of geopolitical analysis, told ISLANDS BUSINESS.

“And, like Central America, these are some of the cheapest buys on the international market, but their political whims often make them unreliable as they flop back and forth between China and Taiwan.

“Ultimately, it is not the United States that will feel the need to fill the regional void to counter China but Australia, which counts the Pacific Islands as within one of their inner spheres of strategic interest.”

Brown's paper, “Aiding or Abetting? Dilemmas of Foreign Aid and Political Instability in the Melanesian Pacific”, says that part of the Pacific is seen by Australia and New Zealand as a potential springboard for illegal immigrants, terrorists, drugs, money laundering and organised crime.

Significantly, he says, Pacific Islanders on a per capita basis have greater representation in international organisations than anyone else in the world.

“No community of 200,000 in China or India has as much independence in international affairs as Vanuatu does. In total, the 7.6 million people of the independent islands states of the Pacific have more voting power in international fora like the General Assembly of the United Nations than the 3.5 billion people of China, India, Japan and the United States combined.

“They also have great geo-strategic importance and carry a great deal of weight as a voting bloc. Consequently, there is strong competition amongst donor countries for influence in the Pacific. Aid is a persuasive currency in this market.”
Chinese and Taiwanese aid was generally offered without strict conditions attached.

Brown says access to aid funds was often the prize for competing powers inside a state.

He noted that this occurred in the Solomon Islands during the civil unrest on the island of Guadalcanal which saw indigenous people try to drive out Malaitans. A rebel group, the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF), then staged a coup.

In what Brown called an “ill-judged intervention”, Taiwan provided a loan of US$17 million to compensate people displaced by the Solomon Islands conflict. Part of the money went to the MEF and Brown quoted other views saying that Taiwan ended up exacerbating the conflict which only ended with the Australian-led intervention in August 2003.

Brown said China was looking to secure mineral and food resources needed for its expanding population and economy.

“A good way to get access to these resources is to develop close relationships with Pacific nations, and one of the best ways to achieve this is through bilateral aid programmes: cynical I know but the Europeans and North Americans have pursued this for decades.”

Powles disputed Crocombe's link between China and the scattered Chinese populations and doubted whether China would ever react if Chinese expatriate communities faced hostility.

Brown wondered if China grew in stature in power, it might want to act against anti-Chinese actions: “a good test-bed for this sort of assertive foreign policy could be the South Pacific”.

The Chinese missile scenario is debated in intelligence circles, although with precious little evidence to show for it. China does not have strategically significant blue water navy, but military thinkers point to their rapid development of land-based anti-cruise missiles, particularly the Ying Ji-82 anti-ship missile, which is said to have a range of up to 200 kilometres and flies just below supersonic speed 30 metres above water. It represents a serious threat to any shipping within range.

Auckland University's political studies senior lecturer, Jian Yang is dismissive of the suggestion. “To say that China could deploy missiles in the islands is particularly imaginative,” he told ISLANDS BUSINESS.

“Will these islands be happy to be involved in such a conflict? Is it realistic to expect countries like Australia and New Zealand to sit by when China starts to deploy these missiles? Is China able to protect these missiles given US military supremacy? 'No' is my answer to all these questions.”

Yang says while China's growing presence in the Pacific serves strategic, political and economic interests, they should not be exaggerated.

“To be a major player in the region certainly helps China strategically. But the strategic benefits still are vague and can only be defined very broadly.”

He says Taiwan is the key factor behind China's presence in the region. “It has always been Beijing's foreign policy priority to squeeze Taipei internationally.”

During the Cold War, the South Pacific was strategically important to Washington. But they have now pulled out. “Beijing happily fills the power vacuum as it serves its interest of winning over Taipei's friends in the region.”

ANTI-CHINESE FERVOUR IN THE SAMOAS The great and the good turned out the day Samoa buried old Chan Mow. He had been the last “coolie” before owning a significant chunk of downtown Apia. Bought to Samoa by the Germans before World War One, Mow prospered despite a hostile New Zealand regime which even made it illegal for Chinese and Samoans to have sex. “Even now with indentured coolies, there is a very considerable mixture of races. “It appears to me that the complete destruction of the Samoan race would be the lamentable result of British occupation,” the first administrator, Robert Logan, said. Mow's 13 children, 37 grandchildren and eight great grandchildren testified to the potency of legal sex control. Ultimately, Samoans ended up swallowing the Chinese community which barely survives today in some of the names-and even that disappears as part Chinese Samoans assume chiefly title names. Anti-Chinese feeling remains though, as opposition politician A'eau Peniamina questioned China's “real motives” and warned “to be careful of the Chinese, they could run you out of business as seen elsewhere.” Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi took issue: “That is racist and I will not stand for any racism in this Parliament.” In neighbouring American Samoa earlier this year, anti-Asian feeling arose at the inauguration of Governor Togiola Tulafono where the Assemblies of God superintendent Siaosi Mageo urged the deportation of Koreans. “In the 1980s, Samoans took care of the African snail problem by using these strong brooms. Today, we seem to not be able to do anything about the new threat-the Korean snail.” One day Samoans would wake up to find they had Korean politicians and a Korean governor. “Our people will be reduced to nothing. Wake up Samoa, you are still sleeping. It is shameful, utter shameful, that foreigners come here and rule over us.” He overlooked the fact that he lived in “American” Samoa.