Australia and New Zealand have urged China to release the details of a new policing pact with the Solomon Islands, saying that Beijing’s latest push for influence threatens to inflame tensions in the South Pacific.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare signed a raft of deals during a trip to Beijing this week, including an agreement allowing China to maintain a police presence in the developing Pacific nation until 2025.
China has lavished attention on the Solomon Islands since it severed ties with Taiwan in 2019, pledging large amounts of aid and bankrolling a series of critical infrastructure projects.
A spokesperson for Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong (黃英賢) on Tuesday said that there were concerns the police cooperation plan between Solomon Islands and China would “invite further regional contest.”
“Solomon Islands and China should provide transparency of their intentions to Australia and the region by publishing the agreement immediately, so the Pacific family can collectively consider the implications for our shared security,” the spokesperson said.
The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs also expressed unease.
“We would like the text to be made public in order to understand any security implications for the region,” a spokesperson for the ministry said yesterday.
The Solomon Islands sits at the center of an escalating tug-of-war as China vies for regional influence with Australia and the US.
Australia’s own longstanding security pact with the Solomon Islands was recently put under review, stoking fears that the island nation was drifting closer to China’s orbit.
Although Sogavare has repeatedly said his country is “friends to all,” a video posted by Chinese state media showed him telling officials “I am back home” after touching down in Beijing earlier this week.
Solomon Islands opposition politician Peter Kenilorea Junior said he had a “gut feeling” that Sogavare wanted to shift the country’s stance closer to China.
“This choice has been made a long time ago,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “Arriving in China and saying that, ‘I’m home,’ it’s very clear.”
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