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Inside Out | China is wooing Pacific nations – but can it win trust?
- Wang Yi’s eight-nation voyage across the Pacific is of a piece with China’s decades-long diplomatic focus on its neighbours and the developing world
- However, China is not trusted and remains misunderstood and largely unloved – even in regions where diplomatic efforts have been exerted the most
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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi sent diplomatic shock waves across the world in May with his announcement of an eight-nation voyage around the Pacific. What nation has ever showered such conspicuous time and attention on these tiny nations?
While Western powers chewed their nails about the potential security implications, Pacific Island nations celebrated that a major power was at last taking seriously their concerns about climate change and sea-level rise. And, of course, it helped that Wang came bearing gifts, including helping to build infrastructure.
On balance, there should have been no surprise – not because the visit reinforces China’s aspirations to be a voice in developments across the vast and largely empty Pacific Ocean, but because it illustrates different foreign policy priorities.
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How many noticed that Wang hotfooted it from the the Pacific to Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan, to join last week’s China+Central Asia foreign ministers’ meeting? How many noticed that Wang’s first foreign trip every year is to Africa – this January, to Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros in East Africa, and last year to Senegal in West Africa for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation?
While most of us dedicate much attention to US President Joe Biden’s visit to South Korea and Japan for the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and to Nato and other US-Europe leaders’ meetings to address Russia and the urgent challenges of the invasion of Ukraine, few recognise that China’s diplomatic energies are pointed in very different directions – and that this has been consistently true for decades.
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US foreign policy priorities were largely forged during World War II, and focused on a small number of rich and like-minded Western governments that even today are the world’s dominant powers. Meanwhile, China’s foreign policy priorities have been engaged elsewhere, and are driven by different – mainly economic and defensive – objectives.
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