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A view of Honiara, the capital of Solomon Islands. Photo: Xinhua

Australia-China relations: Solomon Islands may lean less on the West with new pact, but at what cost?

  • The Solomon Islands’ new security pact with China was driven by the inability of the West to adequately address the country’s development needs, analysts say
  • While closer ties with Beijing will mean the Pacific nation need not ‘obey orders’ from Australia, there are concerns the pact will be used to curb domestic dissent
The Solomon Islands’ new security pact with China should be a cause for concern for its 680,000 citizens, given suggestions it was rushed by the Honiara government with little consultation and the potential for it to be abused to curb domestic dissent, analysts say.
Nonetheless, the deal happened due to the inability of the Pacific nation’s traditional benefactor states – in particular Australia – in addressing long-standing concerns about underdevelopment and in mitigating climate change, the observers said.

The sharp focus the Solomons has come under due to the pact was underscored on Friday, as the senior White House official Kurt Campbell arrived in the country after discussing concerns about it with neighbouring Fiji and Papua New Guinea this week.

The US and Canberra have expressed concerns that the pact could lead to China gaining a military foothold in the South Pacific. Beijing and the Honiara government confirmed the deal had been signed this week but the actual text has not been released.

National flags of the Solomon Islands and China flutter in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Photo: Reuters

Causing particular alarm to the US and its Western allies was a draft leaked last month that showed it would allow China to deploy naval assets to the Pacific nation.

The Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare on Wednesday said his government had signed the pact “with our eyes open”, but refused to say when the text of the deal might be published. He ruled out the prospect of China building a military base in the country.

Patricia O’Brien, adjunct Asian Studies professor at Georgetown University in the United States, said concerns about the agreement stem from the lack of transparency, with even the Solomon Islands parliament not given access to the document.

Australia’s PM Morrison accuses China of ‘interfering’ in the Pacific

“Basic democratic processes of transparency and accountability – to parliament and the people of the Solomon Islands – have been violated,” said O’Brien, who is also an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Concerns also stem from the security deal not being in the national interest but rather in the interests of an unpopular leader who has now signed China up to guarantee his power,” O’Brien said, adding that the opacity did not bode well for the implementation of the deal.

“This is a very troubling development for the people of the Solomons and supersedes any benefits China brings in terms of development funds,” O’Brien added.

Last year, China said it would donate US$11.3 million in rural development funds to the Solomon Islands, fulfilling a pledge it made to the Pacific nation to help it transition away from its previous alliance with Taiwan.

Though the amount is relatively small, it is widely reported as a significant budget item for a tiny country of fewer than 700,000 people.

Marc Lanteigne, associate professor at the University of Tromsø in Norway, said the secrecy in which the agreement was discussed would increase the prospect of great power attention as concerns had been raised locally about the effects of the deal on Honiara’s security sovereignty.

Biden adviser in Solomon Islands days after China security pact signed

Lanteigne added that even with no actual Chinese military facility in the Solomons, placing Chinese security personnel in the Pacific so close to Australia “does shake up the strategic status quo”.

Among Solomon Island residents who have expressed concerns over the deal – in particular, the military element of it – former aid agency worker Charlie Mohini said the concern, even anger, is due to the lack of trust that people have in China.

“It is just a big country that is very different to ours,” Mohini said, adding that the Sogavare government is likely to benefit from the deal in the form of “money, maybe, or other things”.

“I just don’t know why they would do it otherwise,” Mohini added.

Australian PM Scott Morrison’s government has been criticised for its “big brother” approach to the Solomon Islands. Photo: AP

Canberra’s ‘big brother’ approach

Apart from ensuring the Solomons’ domestic security concerns, Lanteigne, from the University of Tromsø, said there was emphasis on providing humanitarian help, which was in keeping with previous comments from Beijing that Australia had ignored the connection between security and development in the Pacific.

For about a decade, the Solomon Islands had been referred to, along with Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea, as being part of an “arc of instability” in the Pacific, Lanteigne noted.

“But critics have long stated that Canberra’s ‘big brother’ approach to diplomacy and peace-building in the region was not addressing the core problems of underdevelopment, including in the Solomons,” Lanteigne said.

He highlighted that while Australia had played a prominent role in a regional aid initiative between 2003 to 2017 that stabilised the country, high poverty levels and political divisions remained.

02:17

China confirms signing of Solomon Islands security pact, as US warns of regional instability

China confirms signing of Solomon Islands security pact, as US warns of regional instability

Ramsi, or the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, also known as Operation Helpem Fren, was a partnership between the people and government of Solomon Islands and 15 contributing countries of the Pacific region and is mainly funded and led by Australia.

“The security deal takes place at a time when policy differences between many Pacific governments and Canberra were growing in number,” Lanteigne said, pointing to the repeated emphasis made by Pacific Island states that the biggest security issue in the region is the effects of climate change.

“But Canberra’s foot-dragging on environmental targets has frustrated many Pacific governments,” Lanteigne said, adding that despite attempts to liberalise trade-in the Pacific, concerns remain that these deals continue to favour Canberra and Wellington.

Trade liberalisation in the region is mainly carried out through the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus (PACER Plus) agreement which came into force in December 2020.

Parties to the agreement include New Zealand, Australia, Samoa, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tonga, the Solomon Islands, Niue and the Cook Islands.

Manasseh Sogavare, Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, has signed a security pact with China. Photo: AP

While Australian prime minister Scott Morrison launched the Pacific Step-up plan in November 2018 to rework Canberra’s relations with the Pacific, which includes initiatives to improve economic security and address health emergencies, this is seen as a “primarily reactive” response to China’s own engagement policies, according to Lanteigne.

“In short, the Morrison government has been seen as increasingly out of touch with the Pacific, providing an opening for Beijing to increase its visibility still further, and this security agreement is the latest example of this,” added Lanteigne.

As for the US which is now taking up an active interest in the Solomon Islands, including plans to reopen its embassy in Honiara, Lanteigne said Washington was widely perceived as being “missing in action” in regards to Pacific affairs.

During the initial stages of former US president Barack Obama’s policies to rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region, there was discussion about including the Pacific more directly, but even so, “little came [out] of that”, noted Lanteigne.

Biden adviser in Solomon Islands days after China security pact signed

Hideyuki Shiozawa, a senior programme officer at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s Pacific Island nations programme, said that Chinese influence has yet to rival Australia’s given Canberra’s status as the main donor to the country.

But with China becoming “the alternative source of help”, Shiozawa said the Solomon Islands no longer “had to obey orders from Australia” and can easily turn to Beijing if Canberra threatened sanctions or terminated aid.

“China has turned the Solomon Islands into acting [more like] a sovereign state against Australia’s influence,” Shiozawa noted.

Additional reporting by Joshua Mcdonald

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