With Pacific policing deal, Australia curtails China influence in long diplomatic game (2024)

SYDNEY – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been cutting down on his international travel recently as he prepares for an election in early 2025, but he spent three days in the small Pacific nation of Tonga this week for a summit that he could not afford to miss.

Since 2018, when newly appointed leader Scott Morrison stayed at home, Australian prime ministers have made sure that they attend the annual leaders’ summit of the Pacific Islands Forum, an 18-member grouping that includes Australia and New Zealand.

This heightened interest in the Pacific has been prompted by concerns in Canberra, Wellington and Washington about China’s rising influence in the region.

In 2019, China persuaded two Pacific countries – Solomon Islands and Kiribati – to switch allegiance to it from Taiwan. Nauru switched in January 2024. China also signed a secret security deal with the Solomon Islands in April 2022, raising concerns in Canberra that it could lead to the establishment of a military base.

But Australia has been fighting back and trying to limit China’s influence – and this week’s summit delivered Canberra a significant diplomatic victory in the form of a new regionwide policing deal.

The Pacific Policing Initiative, to be funded by Australia at a cost of A$400 million (S$354 million) over five years, will involve training police from across the region in Brisbane, Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, and three other Pacific cities to be determined.

Pacific officers will then be able to deploy across the region to assist in dealing with crises such as national disasters or civil unrest, or to protect major events such as an upcoming Commonwealth leaders’ meeting in Samoa.

Associate Professor Graeme Smith, an expert on China-Pacific relations from the Australian National University, told The Straits Times that the new police initiative is much needed, especially to combat transnational crimes such as drugs and human trafficking.

But he said the initiative also delivered a win for Canberra in its bid to counter China’s reach, especially as Beijing has been seeking to secure policing deals with countries such as Papua New Guinea.

“Given transnational crimes in the Pacific, this initiative is pretty necessary,” he said. “It is a victory for Australia, but not one they should celebrate too loudly.”

Indeed, Mr Albanese was careful to insist that the initiative was requested and backed by Pacific leaders.

“This is Pacific-led,” he told ABC Radio on Aug 30. “Having that consistency, interoperability, will mean that all of the police forces can be more effective.”

But, embarrassingly, Mr Albanese was caught showing slightly more jubilation during a private conversation in Tonga with US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell.

In footage recorded by a New Zealand journalist, Mr Albanese was heard telling Mr Campbell that the deal was a “cracker” and will make “such a difference”.

Mr Campbell described it as “fantastic” and suggested that Washington had proposed a similar deal but agreed to a request by Australia’s Ambassador to the US, Mr Kevin Rudd, to allow Canberra to pursue it.

It was an unfortunate moment for the Australian Premier, who has been keen to demonstrate that his country is a committed member of the Pacific “family” and is acting in the region’s interests, rather than taking sides in a wider contest between Washington and Beijing.

Indeed, Pacific island leaders have repeatedly insisted that they do not want to see the region become a backdrop for geopolitical rivalries.

The main reservations about the policing deal this week came from Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, who told the summit on Aug 27 that the deal should be designed to suit the Pacific rather than “the geostrategic interests and geostrategic denial security postures of our big partners”.

Similar sentiments were expressed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group, a grouping which includes Vanuatu, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.

Mr Blake Johnson, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told ST the initiative was a setback for China because it could reduce the need for Pacific nations to require security support from outsiders such as Beijing.

He said he believed China wanted the initiative to fail and had tried to lobby Pacific leaders behind the scenes.

“The primary reason for the initiative is to create an effective security force, not to block out China,” he said. “If you have an effective security force, you won’t need an outside force and inevitably China will have a reduced role in that space.”

He added: “Would China be pleased about that? I’m sure it would not be.”

China also suffered a separate diplomatic setback at the summit after it pushed unsuccessfully for the forum to end its association with Taiwan as a development partner. Solomon Islands, which has close ties to China, pushed for the change. But the move was opposed by most members, including the three remaining countries that have ties with Taiwan – Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu.

Still, as Mr Johnson noted, China’s setbacks this week are unlikely to end its effort to expand its Pacific reach.

“If Australia is considering (the summit) a victory, it is a small one in a very, very long game,” he said.

For the foreseeable future, Australian leaders, no matter how preoccupied they are at home, will have to keep visiting their neighbours.