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Solomons: A Step Closer to Authoritarianism

FORUM Staff

Indo-Pacific allies and partners continue to express concern about the implications to regional stability of a proposed security pact between the Solomon Islands and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), even as the Pacific island nation’s government insisted it would not allow a Chinese military base on its territory.

Under the draft deal — details of which were leaked on social media in late March 2022 — the PRC could send police and military forces to the Solomon Islands “to assist in maintaining social order,” among other reasons, The Associated Press (AP) reported in early April. Chinese warships could also use the island nation for stopovers and supply replenishment, a prospect that has “sent shudders throughout the South Pacific” over a possible massive military buildup by Chinese forces.

Solomon Islands officials have said the agreement will help the nation’s limited security apparatus respond to “recurring internal violence.” Along with Chinese officials, they have denied any ulterior motive for the arrangement and insist it would not undermine their national sovereignty, despite the lopsided nature of the proposed partnership — the Solomon Islands has about 700,000 people and no military forces; the PRC has a population of 1.4 billion and an estimated 2 million active-duty troops.

Leaders in nations including Australia, Micronesia, New Zealand and the United States worry about the PRC’s long-term intentions for such an agreement, noting Beijing’s assertiveness and militarization elsewhere in the region, particularly the disputed waters of the South China Sea. The Solomon Islands is about 2,000 kilometers northeast of Australia and about 3,000 kilometers southeast of the U.S. territory of Guam, home to a vital U.S. military base.

“We have asked Solomon Islands respectfully to consider not signing the agreement and to consult the Pacific family in the spirit of regional openness and transparency, consistent with our region’s security frameworks,” Zed Seselja, Australian minister for International Development and the Pacific, said in a statement after an April 13 meeting with Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.

“We welcome recent statements from Prime Minister Sogavare that Australia remains Solomon Islands’ security partner of choice, and his commitment that Solomon Islands will never be used for military bases or other military institutions of foreign powers,” Seselja said, according to Reuters.

The prospect of Chinese naval vessels operating from the Solomon Islands would “change the calculus,” Lt. Gen. Greg Bilton, Australia’s chief of joint operations, told AP.

“They’re in much closer proximity to the Australian mainland, obviously, and that would change the way that we would undertake day-to-day operations, particularly in the air and at sea,” he said.

Australia and New Zealand are particularly concerned, given their traditional role in providing security and other assistance to the Solomon Islands, which gained independence in 1978 after about 80 years as a United Kingdom protectorate.

“The language and substance of the draft agreement betray its origins in Beijing and thus serve to identify China’s ambitions in the Solomons and by extension the region more generally,” Richard Herr, an academic director at the University of Tasmania, wrote in an April 2022 article for The Strategist, a publication of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “The implied preferential extraterritoriality in the draft allowing China to use its military ‘to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects’ raises concerns beyond Solomons Islands.

“A belated public declaration that the Solomons would never allow a Chinese military base is scarcely likely to settle concerns,” Herr wrote.

In recent years under Sogavare’s leadership, the island nation has turned toward Beijing. In 2019, it cut diplomatic ties with the self-governed island of Taiwan in favor of the PRC and promptly signed onto Beijing’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure scheme, Herr noted. Those decisions — combined with complaints about Chinese-owned businesses hiring foreigners over islanders — helped spark anti-government protests in the nation’s capital, Honiara, including its Chinatown neighborhood.

At Sogavare’s request, Australia sent diplomats, police and troops to help restore order under the terms of a 2017 bilateral security treaty that provides for rapid deployment of such assistance during a major security challenge, according to AP.

The PRC accounts for an estimated 65% of the Solomon Islands’ exports, primarily lumber, fish, aluminum, palm oil and cocoa beans. Most islanders make their living in farming, fishing or forestry, with about 1 in 8 living under the poverty line, according to the World Bank. However, the islands have rich, undeveloped resources of minerals including gold, nickel, zinc and lead. (Pictured: A man arrives by boat at the central markets in Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands. Many of the residents of the island nation people make a living fishing.)

The PRC has only one declared overseas military base, in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, which sits along a vital maritime trade route. But, as in the case of the Solomon Islands, Chinese investment in other strategically important locations around the region has raised the specter of eventual militarization of facilities built ostensibly for civilian purposes. Analysts point, specifically, to PRC involvement in port and naval base projects in Cambodia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The PRC has been pursuing a port facility in the South Pacific for about five years to extend its naval presence and further its objective of regional domination, according to Euan Graham, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“If they want to break out into the Pacific, at some point they will need the logistics capability to support that presence,” Graham told AP in early April. “We’re not talking about war plans here; this is really about extending their presence and influence.”

 

IMAGE CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES

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