Illustration: Chen Xia/GT

TheMKsports 2024 Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting was opened on Monday in Nuku'alofa, the capital of Tonga, at the Tonga High School Indoor Stadium, the largest China-aid project in the Pacific island nation. Attending this summit of the Pacific region's most important political decision-making organization, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), are leaders of the 18 Pacific Island countries (PICs), along with representatives from the regional multinational organization's 21 dialogue partners including China and the US. 

Priority issues on the meeting's agenda include economic development, enhancement of disaster resilience capabilities, and most importantly, prompt and concrete actions to combat climate change which has posed an existential crisis for the PICs. "If we save the Pacific, we save the world," said the UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the meeting's opening ceremony. "The region urgently needs substantial finance, capacities and technology to speed up the transition and to invest in adaptation and resilience," he pointed out.

However, despite the urgent and pressing concerns shared by PIF members and the international community at large, Australia lobbied and pressured the PIF to adopt a Pacific Policing Initiative. The initiative was announced to have been endorsed on Wednesday, but not without pushback and opposition from some Pacific countries' leaders due to concerns about the proposal's lack of transparency and potential risks.

The initiative proposes to establish a coordination hub at the Australian Federal Police facilities in Brisbane, set up four police training centers at select locations in the region and create a multinational police force. Although the initiative is "Pacific-led," the commitment of AUD $400 million to this proposal over five years suggests Australia's dominant role as the PICs' "security partner of choice." This move has been interpreted by most international media outlets as a geostrategic attempt to "box out" China's presence in the region.

It is plain to see beneath the "stronger together" rhetoric lies a geostrategic Cold War mentality, aimed at ostracizing China, and disrupting its cooperation and partnership with the PICs. 

Due to the legacy of Western colonization, many countries in the Pacific region have inadequate systems of social governance and law-enforcement capabilities. In the event of law-breaking infringements, in particular during social unrest and riots, police forces in many island countries often struggle to cope. 

Take the Solomon Islands. When riots erupted in its capital Honiara in December 2021, the police force was ineffective. Australia sent federal police and the Australian Defence Force to help rein in the violence, but the Solomon Islands' then prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, criticized the Australian personnel. He felt that they had failed to provide the sufficient necessary protection to some businesses and households, in particular Chinese-built infrastructures, that were being targeted in the violence. 

After the riots subsided, the Solomon Islands government became aware of the need to comprehensively enhance its policing capacity on a long-term basis. It requested aid and support from Chinese law-enforcement departments, which positively responded with prompt assistance programs to provide the much-needed policing equipment and training. Without public relationship fanfare or dollar diplomacy, the overall law-enforcement capability of the Solomons' police was significantly improved. The successful running of last year's Pacific Games and this year's general election in the island country is a testament to the effectiveness of the bilateral policing cooperation.

Improving social order and stability has ensured the favorable business environment, which in turn benefits China's economic cooperation with the island country. Mutual respect, mutual understanding and mutual benefits are the cornerstone to the unwavering development of the bilateral partnership.

The zero-sum-motivated regional exclusive security pact only serves the geostrategic goals of some major power and its allies, with their "Indo-Pacific Strategy." As Vanuatu's Prime Minister Charlot Salwai pointed out to his fellow Pacific leaders, "we need to make sure that this [policing initiative] is framed to fit our purposes and not developed to suit the geostrategic interests and geostrategic denial security postures of our big partners." 

In the words of Baron Waqa, the PIF's secretary-general and former president of Nauru, "We don't want them to fight in our backyard here. Take that elsewhere." 

The author is professor and executive director of the Asia Pacific Studies Centre, East China Normal University. [email protected]