Choose Beijing over Taipei, Solomon Islands task force recommends amid changing tides in Pacific
- With China pumping funds into aid and infrastructure projects in the Pacific, island nations are reassessing their ties with Taiwan
But the archipelago is publicly debating switching recognition to China, leaving Taiwan facing the prospect of losing one of its last remaining allies. The move took a step closer to reality on Friday after a Solomon Islands parliamentary task force handed down its widely anticipated recommendation that Honiara “stands to benefit” from establishing formal ties with Beijing.
Since Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016, five of the self-governing island’s allies have switched allegiance to China, including three last year alone.
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Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, who in July remarked that Taiwan was “completely useless to us”, had previously said the government would make no formal decision until after a review of the task force’s findings – which have yet to be presented to parliament.
Jonathan Pryke, director of the Sydney-based Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands Programme, said the task force’s recommendation did not come as a surprise. “Ultimately, the decision has to be made by the parliament,” he said.
The timeline for such a resolution is unclear. While the Solomons’ opposition leader Matthew Wale reportedly said an outcome might be reached by November, former prime minister and current Minister for National Planning and Aid Coordination Rick Houenipwela last month told Radio New Zealand a vote in parliament would not happen at all this year.
Taiwan’s representative in the Solomon Islands in a Facebook post on Friday said the task force did not properly conduct its mission and called the report a “fallacy”.
United States officials in the capital Honiara this week warned the Solomon Islands against cutting ties with Taiwan, and US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper last month accused Beijing of trying to destabilise the region with “predatory economics”.
Beijing has injected more than US$1.2 billion in aid into the Pacific nations since 2011, according to Lowy Institute data.
China has backed the development of infrastructure in the region, such as the US$490 million deep water port in Tibar Bay, East Timor and a new wharf in Vanuatu.
As states which share democratic ideas, the Pacific Islands nations are committed to and share Taiwan’s political ideas and systems
Kabini Sanga, a former education official and consultant to the Solomon Islands government, said Pacific relations with Taiwan were about more than money.
“As states which share democratic ideas, the Pacific Islands nations are committed to and share Taiwan’s political ideas and systems,” said Sanga, currently associate professor at Victoria University Wellington. “They cannot say this about China.”
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However, Zhang Baohui, director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, said Taipei could no longer compete with Beijing diplomatically.
“While in the 1990s some countries did play the two sides [against each other], today it is clear that switching to Beijing will definitely yield greater benefits,” Zhang said.
El Salvador in 2018 became the fifth country to dump Taiwan as a diplomatic ally in the past three years, following on the heels of Burkina Faso, Sao Tome and Principe, the Dominican Republic and Panama. Taipei has 17 remaining diplomatic allies, six of them small Pacific island nations.
When asked about the Solomon Islands’ upcoming decision, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying on Thursday said adhering to the one-China principle “conformed to the trend of the times”.
Pryke from the Lowy Institute said Taiwan’s effort to maintain and improve its Pacific partnerships should not be underestimated.
“[Pacific nations] should take seriously the relative benefits they can receive from both sides – these small nations have little international leverage,” he said. “They will only get to play this card once.”
At the same time, Beijing is facing a trust deficit in the region. Pryke said China had at times been “heavy handed” in its engagement in the Pacific, “behaving in ways that are angering Pacific people and their leaders”.
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In countries that maintain diplomatic ties with Beijing, Chinese investment, loans and aid have in some cases generated blowback.
In Tonga and Vanuatu – where Beijing-backed loans respectively account for more than 60 per cent and almost half of external debt – reliance on Chinese lending has sparked warnings about sustainability from bodies such as the World Bank.
Ishmael Kalsakau, who leads the Union of Moderate Parties, Vanuatu’s largest opposition party, last year raised questions about the country’s growing reliance on Chinese investment, which has funded major infrastructure projects, including a US$78 million wharf.
Tonga Prime Minister Akilisi Pohiva, who died on Thursday at age 78, last year proposed banding together with other Pacific nations to push China for debt relief after drawing attention to his country’s debt problem – before shelving the plan soon after with little explanation.
Tonga switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1998, and accepted loans from China to rebuild its capital after deadly riots in 2006.
The nation now owes US$115 million – about a third of its GDP – to Beijing, although the debt was deferred last year when Tonga signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s infrastructure investment strategy.
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Jeff Patunvanu, secretary general of Vanuatu’s Nagriamel traditionalist political movement, last week called for a review of his country’s support for the one-China policy as well as the sale of passports to Chinese nationals.
Though the Vanuatu government, which will hold elections early next year, has given no indication of any desire to switch diplomatic allegiances, he claims there are other members of parliament who agree with his stance.
Former Vanuatu legislator Robert Bohn Sikol said some Pacific nations might “wobble” on their positions in the quest for greater attention from China. “Mostly, South Pacific countries just want development funding,” he said. “Politicians are clever enough to understand the process of playing off one large donor against another.”
According to the Lowy Institute, between 2011 and 2018, Taipei sent just US$224 million in aid to Pacific island nations, compared with China’s US$1.26 billion. ■
