China’s Influence on the Freely Associated States of the Northern Pacific
Davidson, Philip; Stilwell, David; Underwood, Robert (2022-09-20). China’s Influence on the Freely Associated States of the Northern Pacific. Series on China’s influence on conflict dynamics around the world (Report). Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace. p. 56.
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Abstract: Over the past decade, the People’s Republic of China has become the leading trade and investment partner of the Pacific Island nations and a major provider of foreign assistance and loans, including through the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure development strategy, which now has projects in 10 countries in the region. On the diplomatic front, China has increased its footprint in regional organizations, stepped up high-level visits, increased the professional diplomatic staff at its embassies, and deepened law enforcement and security partnerships. The COVID-19 pandemic provided China an opportunity to build additional goodwill by donating vaccines and personal protective equipment and financing economic recovery efforts.
Chinese officials have not stated publicly that the Pacific Islands region is an area of heightened strategic interest, but the benefits for Beijing of increased engagement with the region are clear. Perhaps to a greater extent than any other geographic area, the Pacific Islands offer China a low-investment, high-reward opportunity to score symbolic, strategic, and tactical victories in pursuit of its global agenda. The generally low levels of economic development among Pacific nations and the limited engagement, often perceived in local capitals as neglect, that they have received from other regional powers—including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States—have created a geostrategic void that China has sought to fill using the playbook it has honed elsewhere in the world: foreign assistance, private-sector investment and loans, sustained and high-level diplomacy, and in some cases tools of elite capture such as corruption and economic coercion. These tools have allowed China to make progress on key lines of geostrategic effort in the Pacific that have proven more difficult to pursue in other, more contested regions.
China’s growing influence in the Pacific Islands poses a challenge to US interests, one that should be viewed with concern but not alarm. The United States enjoys a strategically advantageous position in the region thanks to its forward presence and long history of engagement with local partners. In addition to the state of Hawaii and territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands, the United States also maintains special relationships with three sovereign countries in the northern Pacific—the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI).
