China- Pacific Islands 

Context 

What is the strategic significance of the PICs?

• They are located largely in the tropical zone of the Pacific Ocean between Asia, Australia and the Americas.
• They include Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
• The islands are divided based on Physical and human geography into three distinct parts Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia.
• The islands are very small in land area and are spread wide across the vast equatorial swathe of the Pacific Ocean.
• They are the smallest and least populated states and some of the largest Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) in the world.
• Large EEZs translate into huge economic potential due to the possibility of utilising the wealth of fisheries, energy, minerals and other marine resources present in such zones.
• They prefer to identify as the Big Ocean States, rather than the small Island States.
• Kiribati and FSM, both PICs,  have EEZs larger than that of India.
• These countries played an important role in major power rivalry as springboards for power projection and laboratories for developing and demonstrating strategic capabilities.
• The major powers of the colonial era competed with each other to gain control over these strategic territories.
• The Pacific islands also acted as one of the major theatres of conflict during the Second World War between imperial Japan and the U.S.
• Due to the remoteness of these islands from the Soviet Union and major population centres of the world and major nuclear weapon test sites of the U.S., the U.K. and France were located here.
• The 14 PICs, bound together by shared economic and security concerns account for as many votes in the United Nations and act as a potential vote bank for many powers to mobilise international opinion.

What does China seek to achieve from the PICs and how?

• China does not have any particular historical linkages to the PICs, unlike the Western powers.
• Its interest in the PICs is of relatively recent origin and is linked to China's rise in the past few decades.
• The PICs lie in the natural line of the expansion of China's maritime interest and naval power.
• They are located beyond China's First Island Chain and represent the country's first threshold of maritime expansion.
• The PICs are located geostrategically in what is referred to by China as its Far Seas, the control will make China an effective Blue Water Capable Navy an essential prerequisite for becoming a superpower.
• At a time when the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has emerged as a major force in the Indo- Pacific vis-a-vis China, the need to influence the PICs has become an even more pressing matter for China.

Taiwan re-unification

• The Taiwan factor plays a major role in China's Pacific Calculus.
• China, which considers Taiwan to be a breakaway territory is preparing for what seems like an inevitable military invasion.
• In this context, it becomes important to break Western domination of island chains of the Pacific which could impede reunification.
• Wooing the PICs away from the West and Taiwan will therefore make the goal of Taiwan's re-unification easier for China.
• It has to be noted here that a zero-sum game has been underway in the past few decades in the Pacific between China and Taiwan in terms of gaining diplomatic recognition.
• China has been successful in getting diplomatic recognition from 10 out of the 14 PICs through its economic largesse.
• Only four PICs such as Tuvalu, Palau, Marshall Islands and Nauru, currently recognise Taiwan.

What are the implications of China's latest move?

1. China-Pacific Island Countries Common Development Vision.
2. China-Pacific islands Five-year Action Plan on Common Development (2022 to 2026).

• The vision gives a broad proposal about cooperation in the political, security, economic and strategic areas, whereas the action plan outlines the more specific details of cooperation in the identified areas.
• The Secrecy surrounding the draft and the haste with which it was discussed with the governments of the PICs during the meeting sent worrying signals across the Pacific.
• The PICs as a collective did not agree to China's extensive and ambitious proposals and therefore China failed to get a consensus on the deal.
• China's proposals with caution, as they could have negative implications for the sovereignty and unity of PICs and may drag them into major power conflicts in the future.
• China might have also miscalculated the regional reaction, perhaps led by a monolithic understanding of the PICs after seeing Solomon Island's positive response earlier this year.
• However, China can always come back with an improvised plan which is more acceptable and use it to further, pursue its final objectives incrementally.
• This debacle does not stop China from pursuing bilateral deals of similar nature.
• The U.S and Australia are more cautious about China's diplomacy toward the Pacific Islands.
• The Western powers may have been relieved but may have turned more vigilant and the PICs may have become more united than ever before.