Sat, Aug 17, 2024 page1

• China weaponized tourism: Whipps

  CARROT AND STICK: Palauan president said in 2020 the Chinese ambassador to a neighboring country pledged to flood his country with tourists if it switches alliance

  • AP, WELLINGTON
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  Beijing weaponized tourism to the Pacific archipelago of Palau over its allegiance to Taiwan and its accusations that China was behind a major cyberattack there, Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr told The Associated Press (AP).

  Palau, along with Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, is one of the three Pacific nations to recognize Taiwan as an independent democracy.

  Taipei’s allies in the Pacific have dwindled from six countries in 2019. Nauru abandoned its ties in January.

  

  Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr arrives at a summit on peace in Ukraine, in Stansstad near Lucerne, Switzerland, on June 15.

  Photo: Reuters

  Whipps told the AP in an interview late on Thursday that, in 2020, while he was running for his current post, the Chinese ambassador to a neighboring country pledged to flood his tourism-dependent nation of 20,000 people with 1 million visitors if he capitulated on the country’s stance.

  “That continues to be the overture,” he said by phone. “They say: Why are you torturing yourselves? Just join us and the sky’s the limit.”

  Whipps refused.

  “We don’t need a million tourists,” he added. “It’s not always about how much money we get.”

  His stance is vanishingly rare amid Pacific island nations — some struggling to sustain themselves and feeling overlooked by Western powers while their backyards are increasingly the settings for some of the world’s most potent contests for influence.

  Amid intensifying conflict over ocean territory, resources and political sway, Beijing’s pressure on the three hold-out countries was increasing, analysts said.

  “As the number of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies in the Pacific dwindles, the obstacles to China’s regional diplomacy diminish,” said Mihai Sora, director of the Pacific Islands Program at the Lowy Institute.

  China’s penalties for Palau’s intransigence are not new, but they have escalated in the months leading up to November’s election in which Whipps is to seek another term as leader, he said.

  In May, he blamed China for a major cyberattack on Palau in which 20,000 government documents were stolen.

  The claim was unproven, Whipps said, but no other motive or actor had emerged.

  Earlier that month, Palau tourism industry representatives were denied visas to enter Macau for a lucrative international industry conference.

  Then reports appeared in China’s state media and on an official WeChat channel in June, warning tourists of an increase in safety issues for Chinese visitors to Palau.

  The remarks urged citizens to be cautious when traveling there.

  Whipps rejected the reports of security problems, but said the claims had stuck — visitor numbers from China halved this year, now down to 30 percent of its tourists.

  Once, 70 percent of Palau’s visitors came from China, but the country tried to diversify its market after Beijing unofficially blocked its citizens from visiting in 2017.

  “Palau has found itself in a position where it relies on Chinese tourists for income,” Sora said. “This is a tap China can quite easily turn on and off — and it does.”

  Support comes from other quarters, however.

  Unlike most Pacific nations, Palau, a republic that has been independent since 1994, holds close ties to the US in a free association agreement. Washington provides aid and defense support to Palau and its citizens can live and work in the US.

  In February — as renewal of the aid for Palau, Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia stalled in a divided US Congress — Whipps warned US lawmakers that Beijing was trying to capitalize on the uncertainty.

  The funds have since been unlocked, and Whipps on Thursday shrugged off any suggestion of lasting damage, adding that democracy “sometimes takes a little longer than expected.”

  However, many analysts say Washington was too slow to recognize China’s campaign of influence in the Pacific and took for granted relationships with the leaders of tiny island nations who struggled to address growing economic and climate woes.

  Meanwhile, Whipps said Beijing offered incentives to some leaders, who had never met a US president before the first Pacific summit was held at the White House in 2022, wooing them with red carpets and fanfare.

  Western nations had at times seen Pacific island countries as “dots on a map,” Whipps added.

  However, things were changing, he said.

  This week, Palau hosted New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters, the highest-profile visit Whipps had received from that country.

  “That mutual respect, that caring, it means a lot,” he said, adding that China had elsewhere “done very good at that diplomacy.”

  Palau has instead strengthened its ties with Taiwan and Japan, which along with Australia have supplied diversity to a tourism market still rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic.

  In May, a non-stop airline route opened between Palau and Brisbane, Australia.

  Whipps also hailed education opportunities for Palau’s young people in the US, Australia and New Zealand.

  “We want our best and brightest to be educated in schools that share our values,” he said.

  He also urged more security for its pristine waters — 80 percent of which are a marine sanctuary, the largest proportion of any country in the world.

  Four Chinese vessels have made incursions without permission since he became leader, Whipps said.

  Recent elections in the Pacific have proved fertile ground for bolstering ties with China.

  In the first round of national voting on Wednesday in Kiribati — which cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 2019 — the Chinese embassy announced on polling day that Kiribati seafood could now enter China’s market.

  Ahead of an election in the Solomon Islands in April — which also switched allegiance in 2019, forming a secretive security pact with Beijing — the ruling party warned that cooling relations with China could stifle logging trade with the Solomons, a boon its economy is dependent on.

  As November’s Palau election approaches, challenges from long-time pro-Beijing voices in Palau are growing once more, Whipps said.

  However, the campaign would be fought not on foreign influence, but on the merits of tax reform, he said, adding that he did not believe a change in leadership would weaken ties with Taiwan.

  “We have always believed that we should be friends to all and enemies to none,” Whipps said. “Our relationship with Taiwan should not be questioned by anybody.”

  In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday denounced China for undermining regional peace and stability via economic intimidation, saying that Taiwan and Palau’s friendly relationship is based on “like-minded values.”

  Taiwan would continue to firmly support Palau against economic bullying from China and align with Whipps’ values-based diplomacy to cooperate with Pacific diplomatic allies and other like-minded nations, it said.

  This is not the first time Whipps has warned that China is weaponizing tourism to pressure Palau to sever ties with Taiwan, the ministry said.

  Taiwan understands Palau’s position as an island nation faced with economic bullying from a great power, and would consistently provide warm and firm support, it said.

  Regular flights between Taiwan and Palau have been resumed since November 2022 at a frequency of two days a week, which in April and last month has been incrementally increased to four days a week, the ministry added.

  Additional reporting by Fang Wei-li
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