China roils the Pacific waters courtesy Australia and New Zealand
By Cleo Paskal February 23, 2025
China’s role in the region is a constant pressure in one direction. New Zealand and Australian policies towards the region have been naiveat best, and the situation was worsened by U.S. State Department following Canberra and Wellington’s lead.
Cleo Paskal
Washington, D.C.
This past week flights were diverted between Australia and New Zealand to avoid Chinese military live fire exercises, three Chinese military ships sailed within 277 kilometres of Sydney, and the Cook Islands and China agreed an “Action Plan 2025-2030 for the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the Cook Islands and the People’s Republic of China”.
None of this was a surprise. China’s goals in the region were made clear in its “China Pacific Islands Common Development Vision” (and supporting “Five Year Plan”) documents.
The goals are barely post-colonial and aim to undermine Pacific Islands’ sovereignty, then bring them under Beijing’s control. This is an essential step to, at the least, neutralize Australia and New Zealand.
China’s role in the region is a constant pressure in one direction. The question is, how to respond?
I can tell you how not to respond: the way it’s been done until now. New Zealand and Australian policies towards the region have been naive at best, and the situation was worsened by U.S. State Department following Canberra and Wellington’s lead.
A foundational issue is “what is a country” and, by extension, who has the right to sign nation-to-nation strategic agreements. The Pacific Islands region has a wide range of political arrangements, including the fitful French colony of New Caledonia and the independent countries in Free Association with the United States (Palau, Federated States of Micronesia and Marshall Islands).
Increasingly many of the hard-fought battles of the decolonisation period have been forgotten and undermined as the meaning of sovereignty is blurred.
SOVEREIGNTY BY PRESS RELEASE
For example, the Cook Islands is in “Free Association” with New Zealand. Cook Islanders are New Zealand citizens, use New Zealand passports and the New Zealand dollar. Close to 100,000 Cook Islanders live in New Zealand. Around 17,000 live in the Cook Islands. According to the non-binding 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration, the Cook Islands is supposed to “work together and consult” with New Zealand on defence and national security matters of mutual interest.
Given all that, is it an independent country? Yes, according to Washington. In 2023, the United States issued a press release that recognized Cook Islands as an independent country. It also recognized Niue, another part of the Realm of New Zealand, population 1,700.This was done at a U.S.–Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting in Washington, D.C., which New Zealand and Australia were heavily involved in coordinating. If New Zealand didn’t want it, it is hard to see how it could have happened.
SIGNING AWAY SOVEREIGNTY WITHOUT DEBATE
Meanwhile, Australia has signed deals with Tuvalu (2024) and Nauru (2024) that seriously weaken national sovereignty. The Tuvalu deal, for example, reads: “Tuvalu will mutually agree with Australia any partnership, arrangement or engagement with any other State or entity on security and defence-related matters in Tuvalu.”
The Nauru one goes further: “Nauru shall mutually agree with Australia any partnership, arrangement or engagement with any other State or entity on matters relating to Nauru’s security including maritime security, defence, policing, border protection and cybersecurity sectors, and Nauru’s critical infrastructure concerning banking and telecommunications.”
Is Nauru now less or more independent than Cook Islands?
A critical aspect of this is the deals were done through government-to-government treaties that were not publicly debated before signing, and weren’t ratified by referenda (by contrast, the U.S. Compacts with Palau, Marshalls and Micronesia were widely debated and then ratified by referenda).
WHO GETS A SEAT AT THE TABLE
This confusion over sovereignty can be seen at the Pacific Islands Forum, which calls itself the region’s “premier political and economic policy organisation”. Given the policy aspect, membership was originally generally confined to sovereign countries and self-governing territories—places that had the authority to make foreign policy.
Though now its Members includes Niue (population 1,700) and French colonies New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Recently American territories Guam and American Samoa became Associate Members.
One of the world experts on sovereignty in the region, Howard Hills, was legal counsel for political status affairs in Carter, Reagan, Trump and Biden administrations. In an interview with The Sunday Guardian, he explained the implications.
“In the post-World War II era of decolonization, diplomatic bureaucrats and self-aggrandizing academics have been dispensing relativistic theories about traditional nation-state sovereignty being an anachronism impeding historically dependent peoples seeking greater self-determination. But the Atlantic Charter and U.N. Charter do not promise the benefits of nation state status without the disciplines and the responsibilities that come with separate sovereignty, natality and citizenship.
“Real self-determination requires real political will by peoples aspiring to emerge from dependency to make real choices between real political status options recognized and therefore sustainable and enforceable under international law. Pretending sovereignty has been attained when the test of real nationhood based on the right in independence is not metis a form of condescending neo-colonialism the State Department and French diplomatic elites refer to as ‘wink and nod’ decolonization.
“The State Department was asleep at the wheel as France and then New Zealand manipulated political status principles under U.N. Resolution 2625 to move non-self-governing Pacific territories along the path from observer toward associate and full membership in PIF.
“U.S. announcement of an intention to recognize [Cook Islands as an independent country]was opposed by regional experts as an abandonment of minimal criteria for recognition of sovereignty, and predicted a loss of reciprocity and continuity needed for a legitimate and orderly decolonization process. Under pressure to add fluff to implementation of the Pacific Summit Declaration, the State Department ignored real re-engagement in the region to stop the Chinese diplomatic, economic and security intrusions, and instead engaged in diplomatic tokenism by surrendering to Guam’s demand for associate membership in PIF.”
This approach to sovereignty has created openings that China has exploited.
NZ AND AUSTRLIA PUT ‘THEIR MAN’ IN AT THE PIF
Apart from feeding the confusion over sovereignty, the PIF is also tied directly into the issueof Cook Islands leadership and China. In late2020/early 2021, the position of SecretaryGeneral (SG) of the PIF was up for election by PIF members states. The two leadingcandidateswere Gerald Zackios (Marshall Islands Ambassador to the U.S.) and Cook IslandsPrime Minister Henry Puna.
The SG position was supposed to rotate by region (Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia). It was Micronesia’s turn. Marshall Islands is in Micronesia. So, by the PIF’s own customs, it should have gone to Zackios.
But that would mean the SG position would go to a country that recognizes Taiwan and a man who is well known and liked in DC. Sounds like a good thing for a free and open Indo-Pacific, right? Not to Canberra and Wellington. It came down to a one vote difference and Canberra and Wellington voted for Puna. Puna won.
Possibly Canberra and Wellington thought they were being clever—not annoying Beijing, limiting U.S. engagement in the PIF (Zackios had a direct line into some key people in DC) and so not undermining their own position while putting in a man they thought they could “control” (there had been accusations of corruption again Puna, which he denied).
The result was the five Micronesian countries left the PIF.
They needed to be strong-armed by State to rejoin—though one can’t be sure it really benefited anyone, except ultimately China. China has increasing influence in PIF as it flips more PIF members from Taiwan to China—and uses the PIF to add pressure on those that still recognize Taiwan. It also uses the PIF to legitimize the “independence” of places like Cook that it then leverages into partnerships.
The next PIF meeting is in Solomons—which is heavily PRC-influenced—and there will beextreme pressure on the three remainingcountries that recognize Taiwan (Tuvalu, Marshalls,Palau) at that meeting. At the last PIF meeting, agreed Taiwan language was removedafterpressure from China. And it was the current Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, Mark Brownwho was caught on a hot mic reassuringthe Chinese representative that “we’ll remove it”.
It’s worth noting Australia and New Zealand are also members of PIF. Doesn’t look like theyfought to retain the language. Canberra and Wellington consistently make choices that show unwillingness to seriously displease Beijing. Is Beijing afraid of Canberra or Wellington?Given the recent naval activity, doesn’t look like it.
HOW DID ALL THIS FACILITATE THE CHINA–COOK ISLANDS DEAL?
The U.S. helped the Cooks claim that it had the right to do a deal with China by declaring it an independent country.
Australia set up the precedent for a government to by-pass the will of the people and sign away sovereignty without debate. Note China didn’t object much to the Australia–Tuvalu/Nauru deals. Beijing must have been delighted at the precedence.
New Zealand and Australia backed a controversial Cook Islands Prime Minister over a well-respected candidate from a country that recognizes Taiwan for the leadership of the PIF. It opened the way for the Prime Minister’s equally controversial former Deputy to be come Cooks Prime Minister.
So, a known opportunistic politician was told by the U.S. his country was independent, and Australia legitimized independent countriessigning away sovereignty without public debate.And we’ve known for years what China wants. What did they think would happen?
WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED?
- Resist making a decision to populate a quick feel-good press release if it’s not informed by legal realities and supported by a viable long-term strategy.
- Do all the things democracies are supposed to do (and that are supposed to differentiate them from the PRC): be transparent, consult with the populations, require referenda for major changes in strategic alliances.
- Prosecute corrupt people, giving hope and maneuvering space to the honest people who will fight off the PRC better than any outsiders can. Sure, honest people who love their nations will be harder to “manage” by Canberra and Wellington, but that’s because they will be protecting their sovereignty from all—including the PRC. They will voluntarily support and fight for a free and open Indo-Pacific. No “management” required on that most crucial front.
- If you aren’t Australia or New Zealand, don’t just follow Canberra and Wellington’s lead or accept their narrative about how they know the region so much better than anyone else. If they are so smart, why did the Cooks (and Solomons, etc.) sign strategic deals with China, why have three Pacific Island Countries abandoned Taiwan since 2019, and why are there PLA Navy live fire exercises diverting flights between Australia to New Zealand? Better to work directly with the countries, and people, who do know the region best, and who are most likely to fight to keep it free—the Pacific Islanders.
It’s not complicated. Basically, don’t copy the PRC playbook—Beijing will always be better at it than you will. And Beijing will just ride your draft until it’s time to overtake you. And get one step close to accomplishing its “Vision”.
* Cleo Paskal is Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies and columnist with The Sunday Guardian.
