Download Ratuva Pacific China

Tutorial 9: Retarded Independence.
Read the following article by Steven Ratuva, political scientist on Pacific Islands and answer
the questions.
1) What motivates China to become interest in the Pacific?
2) What problems does the author raise about Australia’s aid?
3) State what Ratuva describes about Australia’s aid, America’s view on China and
China’s view on the Pacific.
4) Do you think each of the three nations have a Australia’s view on the Pacific is
justifiable?
5) What do you think of the Pacific nations’ welcoming Chiense aid? Do you think
Pacific nations are acting ‘wisely’ and independently? Or do you think they are
risking long-term relations they had with the USA and Australia? Give justifications
on each argument.
6) What differences does Ratuva suggest between the Cold War era and today’s
geopolitics?
---The Chinese lake
By Steven Ratuva | Published on May 7, 2011 | Issue 3704 , The New Zealand Listener.
As China’s expanding influence in the Pacific rekindles Cold War rhetoric and America’s
fears play out, do we have good cause to be afraid?
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was blunt: “We are in a competition for influence with
China. Let’s put aside the humanitarian, do-good side of what we believe in. Let’s just talk
straight realpolitik. We are in competition with China.”
Clinton then added, “We have a lot of support in the Pacific Ocean region. A lot of those
small countries have voted with us in the United Nations. They are stalwart American allies,
they embrace our values.”
In her speech to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March, Clinton was not only
drawing a “them” versus “us” line of demarcation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but
making claims to political and ideological support on her side of the line. This is classical
Cold War political psychology and a sign we may be witnessing a rebirth of this type of
rhetoric as the US and China vie for influence in the Pacific.
Her recent visit to the area was partly to reconsolidate the US-Australian-New Zealand
strategic links, which the three countries are keen to maintain following the demise of the old
Australia New Zealand United States defence alliance, Anzus.
China may see its involvement in the Pacific not through a politically dichotomous “them and
us” lens but rather as a “business as usual” approach. In fact, China shudders at the mention
of competition with the US. However, this does not easily dispel the deep suspicion that
China, now the world’s second-largest economy, has implicit long-term strategic motives.
Then again, much of geopolitics is driven by perception and assumptions about one’s
neighbour or adversary.
The increasing acceptance of the Chinese by the Pacific Island states is not because of any
ideological preference but rather a response to the growing demand for development aid by
the poor Pacific economies. Despite Australian and New Zealand aid over the years, Pacific
economies have continued to decline and policy planners have started looking for alternatives.
Australian aid in particular has been singled out as the most problematic because it is based
on the paternalistic assumption that it is possible to replicate Canberra-based models of
governance and ethics around the Pacific by sending out “experts” to change institutions and
associated modes of behaviour. This social-engineering-type approach has provoked charges
of cultural insensitivity, neo-imperialism and self-serving economics.
More than 70% of the “boomerang” aid goes back to Australia and very little benefit trickles
down to its “backyard”, a term used often by Australian leaders to refer to the Pacific. Recent
revelations about fraudulent practices within the Australian aid regime have made a mockery
of its own professed philosophy of aid for “good governance”.
Furthermore, Australia’s policy towards the Pacific has provoked unease. The Pacific Islands
Forum has been seen as too biased towards Australia (most directors of programmes are
Australians), causing leaders of small Pacific Island countries to seek an independent adviser
for regional free trade under the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (Pacer
plus). They are also thinking of taking the advisory role for the Economic Partnership
Agreement with the European Union away from the Pacific Islands Forum for the same
reason.
Perhaps one of the most significant developments was Fiji’s chairmanship of the
intergovernmental Melanesian Spearhead Group, despite Australia’s attempt to thwart this; of
interest is how Fiji – considered the “pariah state” of the Pacific – might use this new-found
power to get back at Australia.
Worse still, Fiji is now fully entrenched in the Chinese camp, cemented by millions of dollars
of aid, intensified military exchanges, increased investment and trade, and enhanced political
and diplomatic links. What Clinton fears is already happening.
One of the grave concerns is that China might set up a military base or even a minor military
establishment in Fiji. This would redefine the regional strategic balance of power in a
significant way, since Fiji is the regional hub and crossroad for South Pacific nations. If this
happened, it would certainly vindicate Australia’s naval expansion in recent years to counter
increasing Chinese naval presence.
So far, China has made aid commitments of about US$600 million for infrastructure,
technology and agriculture to the Pacific. According to a report by ANZ Bank, trade between
China and the Pacific Islands has risen from US$180 million in 2001 to US$1.5 billion in
2010.
There are many sides to the growing international interest in the Pacific. Economic
opportunities abound from the growth in land and sea mining in Papua New Guinea,
Solomon Islands and Fiji. In Papua New Guinea, US oil giant ExxonMobil has started a
US$15 billion natural gas project, and Australian and Chinese companies are scrambling for a
share of the country’s abundant minerals. A Chinese company has been granted a bauxite
mining licence in Fiji, and more are queuing up to take advantage of any future mining boom
there.
The Pacific Ocean holds the world’s largest seabed mining potential, with countries like
Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands, Fiji and Kiribati eager to provide prospecting
licences to potential investors. In addition, Pacific Island states collectively own the world’s
largest exclusive economic zone per land area, a big attraction for fishing nations such as
China, Japan, Korea, the US, Canada and Russia.
The Pacific Island states also own an important political asset – their votes in the United
Nations and other international forums. China and Taiwan have been competing over this for
years; recently, the Arab League and others have made either bilateral or multilateral
approaches hoping to secure voting allies among the Pacific states. Clinton’s speech raised
concerns that the US might lose these votes. For Australia, a few votes may have already
been lost – China stands to be a winner.
Although China may consider it’s making forays into the Pacific basically for economic
reasons, this is not how the West sees it. China is viewed through dual – and, in fact,
hypocritical – lenses. On one hand, the US sees it as an economic saviour for propping up the
economy with US bond purchases and preventing a collapse, Australia sees it as its biggest
market and New Zealand sees it as its third-largest trading partner. On the other hand, China
is viewed with suspicion because of its huge military spending for no articulated purpose, and
because it is seen as a sometimes difficult, vicious and conspiratorial competitor whose
infectious influence on small Pacific Island states should be curbed.
As in the Cold War, the view often held by the US, Australia and New Zealand is that small
Pacific states are too timid and unsophisticated to deal with the big bad Chinese dragon,
which has taken the place of the big bad Soviet bear.
Australian politicians, think tanks and scholars have taken turns condemning Chinese aid in
an array of moralistic denunciations: “non-transparent”, “corrupting” and “debt-generating”.
This was a typical Cold War technique meant to confer the moral high ground on the West
while painting the adversary as morally corrupt.
The anti-Soviet propaganda may have worked during the Cold War but the anti-China
rhetoric is definitely not working today, as Pacific Island states realise they need to move on
as mature global citizens and look for alternative alliances outside their immediate postcolonial circle controlled by Australia and New Zealand. Country after Pacific Island country
– Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea – have accepted Chinese aid with
open arms. This is transforming the future developmental and political trajectory and
reshaping the regional geopolitical architecture of the Pacific in a significant way.
Unlike in the Pacific Cold War, when the line of demarcation was clear, today the line is
blurred, except in the rhetoric. What we have is a hodge-podge of interests by a variety of
actors, some more powerful than others. The US and China are just two of those actors,
although the most powerful economically. They depend on each other: the US provides the
market for Chinese goods, and China’s economic surplus helps pay for US debt. For the
Pacific Island states, China is not really the big bad dragon with fiery nostrils but, rather, a
golden panda whose Midas touch is most welcome. Australia and New Zealand also welcome
China’s foreign investment, but both are wary.
China’s emergence as a major power, just as American influence appears to be on the wane,
has significantly changed Pacific geopolitics in recent years. The South Pacific is rarely
central to major international affairs, but at the height of the Cold War between the Soviet
Union and the US, the Pacific was not spared ideological brinksmanship and manoeuvring.
The Pacific was used as testing ground for nuclear weapons and the US had military bases,
spy installations and communication posts dotted around the ocean. To reinforce this strategic
architecture, the Anzus alliance was formed, based on the “strategic denial” doctrine to keep
the Soviet influence out of the “American lake”, a term often used in the 1980s to refer to the
Pacific Ocean. New Zealand, as a result of its anti-nuclear policies, withdrew from Anzus in
the mid-1980s.
Part of the strategic denial approach was to ensure that small Pacific Island states were to be
kept away from Soviet influence through the three countries providing aid. The paternalistic
perception, which still persists, was that only the big powers could deal with the Soviets
effectively.
At the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, Soviet power in the Pacific diminished and no
longer posed any threat to US hegemony. As a consequence, the Pacific lost its strategic
value. The US closed down it USAid office in Fiji, and the UK withdrew from the Secretariat
of the Pacific Community and closed its High Commissions in Kiribati, Solomon Islands and
Tonga. The Pacific became a forgotten “backyard”.
Responsibility for the Pacific was left to Australia and New Zealand, which liked to imagine
themselves as mini-imperial regional powers of sorts. During the period of the “war on terror”
(in which New Zealand once again withdrew support from the US-led coalition of the
willing), Australia – as Washington’s “sheriff” – used the Pacific as a buffer for its own
national security. One way of doing this was to cast the Pacific as an “arc of instability”
consisting of “failed states” that needed to be fixed, as they were potential breeding grounds
for terrorists.
Then suddenly, as a result of China’s intensive involvement, interest in the Pacific began to
increase. China is not as ideologically or politically imposing as the Soviet Union was, but its
expanding economic influence, at the cost of the old Anzus allies, means the Pacific is living,
as the old Chinese proverb suggests, in interesting times.
Steven Ratuva is a political sociologist and a senior lecturer in Pacific studies at the
University of Auckland.
http://www.listener.co.nz/commentary/the-chinese-lake/
downloaded on 13 October 2011.