Micronesia: China spied on us, bribed us and made threats, says president

The Pacific nation’s outgoing leader claims Beijing gave envelopes full of cash to senior officials and threatened to harm him.

Micronesia's outgoing president David Panuelo (L) with China's Premier Li Keqiang at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2019.

The outgoing president of a Pacific nation claims Chinese agents threatened to harm him for resisting Beijing’s overtures, and gave envelopes full of cash to his country’s senior officials.

David Panuelo, the recently defeated president of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) outlined his claims in a 13-page letter to his nation’s congress after his election defeat a week ago. He alleged Chinese officials had carried out clandestine intelligence operations, interfered in government affairs and compromised national security to further China’s interests.

“I believe that our values are presently being used against us,” Panuelo wrote in his letter, obtained by Associated Press. “One of the reasons that China’s political warfare is successful in so many arenas is that we are bribed to be complicit, bribed to be silent.”

Panuelo, 58, claimed that China intended to push his country away from its traditional western allies: the US, Australia and Japan. “I have had direct threats against my personal safety from PRC [Chinese] officials acting in an official capacity,” Panuelo said, claiming that speaking out against China’s tactics put him and his family at risk. He alleged that Qian Bo, Beijing’s new Pacific envoy, authorised state agents to follow him during a meeting of Pacific island leaders in Fiji last month.

Mr Panuelo says China attempted to ‘curry favour’ with his country’s leaders with cash payments.

The FSM consists of 607 islands extending across 2,900km (1,800 miles) east of the Philippines. The islands have about 114,000 inhabitants. Panuelo lost his seat in the general election on March 7. Peter Christian, 75, who served as the eighth president of FSM from 2015 to 2019, is expected to return.

Panuelo accused Chinese diplomats of handing out envelopes “filled with money” to senior FSM officials “to curry favour”. He added that China’s attempt to influence officials had come after he had planned for his country to switch diplomatic ties from China to Taiwan after a meeting with Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, last month. The Chinese embassy in FSM said the former president’s letter was “a clear misrepresentation”.

The Pacific region remains key to Taiwan’s diplomatic strategy. A third of its remaining allies are in the Pacific but China has steadily siphoned off allegiances to Taiwan through billions of dollars in aid. Kiribati, a country of 129,000 people in the central Pacific, severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 2019 and established foreign relations with China a week after the Solomon Islands announced that it was breaking away from Taiwan.

THE TIMES