Vaccine diplomacy a challenge in the Pacific

Standing up to brazen Chinese attempts to bribe him could not have been easy for Daniel Suidani, the premier of remote and impoverished Malaita, Solomon Islands’ most populous province with 160,000 people. But in displaying the courage and foresight needed to do so, he has delivered a lesson on dealing with Beijing’s notorious debt-trap diplomacy that should resonate among leaders across the Pacific and beyond. It is a lesson as relevant to China’s use of its Belt and Road Initiative to suborn leaders as it is to the way it is employing COVID-19 “vaccine diplomacy” and the supply of millions of doses of its Sinovac, Sinopharm and CanSino to further its strategic interests in countries desperate for help. Doing so is a perverse contradiction of the responsibility China bears for the pandemic. But that has not stopped it cynically seeking to exploit the crisis for its strategic advantage by pledging vaccine supplies to at least 53 countries.

With Australia urgently trying to get 200,000 vaccine doses to help in the deepening COVID-19 crisis in Papua New Guinea, where estimates are there could already be a million infections, Ben Packham reported on Monday that “Australia is in a race against time to secure millions of jabs for the Pacific in the next four weeks or risk a Chinese vaccine diplomacy victory that would push regional partners closer to Beijing”. Much is at stake in Australia succeeding. As Labor’s Pacific spokesman, Pat Conroy, said, Australia needs to deliver on its commitment or risk ceding influence to China: “It is vital Australia remains the partner of choice for Pacific Island nations. If Australia does not step up and provide adequate and timely assistance, this will create a vacuum that will be filled by other nations such as China.”

Mr Suidani’s experience on far-flung Malaita shows that even leaders in the most remote parts of the South Pacific are targets when Beijing sees an opportunity to gain a strategic advantage. For 36 years the Solomons maintained diplomatic ties with Taiwan, not Beijing. In 2019 the central government in Honiara succumbed to Chinese pressure and terminated relations with Taiwan. But Mr Suidani decided Malaita would stick with democratic Taiwan and reject any Chinese attempts to gain a toehold on the island. He says he was then approached by agents acting on behalf of Beijing and scandalously offered a bribe of $SI1m ($165,000) to change sides and opt for China. But, as he told Steve Jackson: “What we have seen with the PRC’s involvement in other countries in the region is that everything looks quite good at the start but, at the end of the day, the countries eventually find it difficult to handle the problems that come with dealing with China.”

Mr Suidani deserves support for his refusal to submit to China’s blatant attempts at coercion aimed at ensnaring the leading elected official on one of the region’s most strategic islands. Small nations across the world have suffered immeasurable damage from Beijing’s oppressive “creditor imperialism” and the shameless debt-trap diplomacy that gives effect to it. The race to supply vaccines has opened up new opportunities for Beijing to double down on its strategy aimed at establishing influence over nations desperate for help with COVID-19. Mr Suidani’s experience underlines the need for extreme caution about what invariably purports to be Beijing’s no-strings-attached largesse but turns out very differently. After Beijing’s disgraceful conduct over the pandemic, the last thing the world needs is for China to gain a strategic victory by emerging as the white knight when it comes to the supply of vaccines.