investigation
Solomon Islands security pact: Why did the Pacific nation turn to China after falling out with Australia?

When Scott Morrison visited the Solomon Islands in 2019, he insisted the trip had absolutely nothing to do with China. It was both the PM’s first overseas jaunt since his surprise election win and the first time an Australian leader had travelled to the Pacific nation in a decade since former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had visited in 2008. The lightning-quick visit lasted just 24 hours but was enough to spark speculation it was part of a strategy to reinforce Australia’s influence in the Pacific as China was pouring more of its resources into the region. Mr Morrison was adamant this was not the case. “We’re here because we are family with the Pacific,” Mr Morrison told reporters in Honiara as he announced $250 million in infrastructure funding. He even criticised those viewing Australia’s relationships with Pacific nations through the lens of China and praised the Middle Kingdom for its economic growth. “I think we’ve got to be careful not to see our ongoing and upgrading relationships here for Australia and the Pacific through those binary terms of the United States and China. They have their interests in the region as do others,” he said. “Australia welcomes the economic growth and advancement of China with their economy. Their record in lifting people out of poverty is second to none. It is one of the most extraordinary achievements of the modern world.” Nearly three years later and the Solomon Islands has now signed a security agreement with China and there is a clear deterioration in its relationship with Australia. Mr Morrison has also become much more vocal in his criticism of China since the pandemic. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare had warmly welcomed Mr Morrison when he arrived for his visit at Honiara airport in 2019, and a few months later was photographed hugging the PM at the Pacific Islands Forum. But this week Mr Sogavare made it clear he had changed his tune on Australia, accusing the Government of hypocrisy and hysteria in its response to the Solomon Islands’ agreement with China in a scathing attack that was aimed squarely at Mr Morrison. One of Mr Morrison’s main criticisms of Solomon Islands-China agreement has been that its full text has not been released and it is “not transparent”. In sharp contrast to his comments back in 2019 on China’s role in the region, Mr Morrison labelled the agreement a “secret deal” and said China “does not play by the same rules” as Australia. On Saturday he even went as far to suggest China was trying to interfere in Australia’s election. Mr Sogavare claimed this criticism was “hysterical” because Australia did not tell the Solomons about its own negotiations with the UK and the US for its AUKUS submarine pact. He also mocked Mr Morrison’s comments that Australia respected Solomon Islands’ sovereignty. Hitting back, Mr Morrison insinuated Mr Sogavare was parroting China by claiming there was a “remarkable similarity” between Mr Sogavare and Beijing’s rhetoric. What exactly is the Solomon Islands deal with China? There have been warning signs brewing about the Solomon Islands and China throughout the Morrison Government’s time in power. In 2019, not long after Mr Morrison’s visit, the Solomon Islands ended its 36-year relationship with Taiwan and established relationships with Beijing. Mr Sogovare met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and signed several agreements including one to join China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. China insists that any country it has diplomatic ties with does not formally recognise Taiwan which it considers part of its territory and not an independent country. Neither the US nor Australia have official diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but both maintain unofficial relationships. Rumours of a potential China-Solomon Islands deal started last year and a draft agreement was leaked in March. The draft said the Solomon Islands could request China to deploy forces including armed police and military personnel to “assist in maintaining social order”. China could also “make ship visits, to carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in the Solomon Islands”. When the draft was leaked there was immediate alarm from Australia, New Zealand and the US. The major concern for Australia, which has long been the Solomon Islands’ chief defence partner and biggest foreign aid donor, was the ability of China to establish a military base there. Mr Morrison has said this would be a “red line” for Australia. Going further than the US has, Defence Minister Peter Dutton used his ANZAC day address to say Australia should be “prepared for war”. Senior US diplomat Daniel Kritenbrink, who was part of a high-level delegation dispatched to the Solomon Islands by the Biden administration, warned that the US would be ready to act if a military base was established but stopped short of outlining exactly what they would do. “We do know that the PRC (People’s Republic of China) is seeking to establish a more robust overseas logistics and basing infrastructure that would allow the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) to project and sustain military power at greater distances,” he said. The Solomon Islands’ deal with China was officially confirmed less than two weeks after Mr Morrison called the election, thrusting the foreign policy issue into the campaign’s spotlight. The deal is a major blow for Mr Morrison who had sought to make the Pacific a focus of his foreign policy agenda. It also can be argued that it contradicts the claims he has made that he is the leader best suited to handle China’s rising power, with Labor arguing despite the PM’s “chest-beating” the deal had happened right under his nose. Both China and the Solomon Islands have been insistent there will not be a Chinese military base. China has labelled the speculation “fake news” while the Solomon Islands have said Australia remains the country’s security partner of choice and its foreign policy remains “friends to all and enemies to none”. This has not been enough to quell Australia’s concerns, with one of the main worries being Solomon Islands’ proximity. It takes about the same time to fly to the Pacific nation from Sydney as it does to fly from Sydney to Perth. While Mr Morrison has campaigned on the idea Labor can’t be trusted with foreign policy — even earning himself a rare rebuke from Australia’s own spy agency after he tried insinuating Anthony Albanese was a Chinese puppet — the Solomon Islands debacle has opened the PM to attacks from Labor on his own record. Shadow foreign minister Penny Wong labelled it the worst foreign policy failure in the Pacific since WWII and criticised the PM for not sending Foreign Minister Marise Payne to Solomon Islands, but instead dispatching Minister for International Development and the Pacific Zed Seselja who the ALP called a “junior woodchuck”. Labor has also attacked the Government on its foreign aid record and climate change policy, arguing its weakness in both areas has damaged relationships in the Pacific. Climate change is a major priority for the Pacific Islands as countries are already seeing devastating impacts from rising sea levels. A group of former Pacific leaders, including former Presidents of Tuvalu, Kiribati, Palau and the Marshall Islands, on Friday released a statement describing climate change as a bigger security threat facing their region than China. How worried should Australia be? Foreign policy experts who spoke to The Sunday Times gave mixed responses on how concerned Australia should be about the deal. Some also said it was unhelpful it was being politicised in the middle of an election campaign. Director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands program Jonathan Pryke said Australia should be “alert, not alarmed” and the reality was that China was a big player in the Pacific and its influence was going to grow. “We have to deal with that with a bit more maturity than we have . . . what we’re seeing coming out of our politicians, it’s not really about Solomon Islands, it’s about whacking the other party,” he said. “We just need to have a bit more of a level head about how we talk about these issues. Because everything we talk about here in Australia, they read in Solomon Islands.” Mr Pryke said after Chinese communities in the Solomon Islands were targeted in anti-government riots last year, which saw the Chinatown in Honiara torched, it was unsurprising China wanted to increase its security arrangements. He also thought it was “extremely unlikely” a military base would actually be set up because the region as a whole was “staunchly non-aligned and did not want to be further militarised”. A military base would also be unpopular with locals and would require permission from landowners. “It’s one thing to sign a deal, a security pact. It’s a whole other thing to encroach on your sovereignty in such a great degree, as Solomon Islands has been trying to rebuild its sovereignty after it’s had to cede so much of it to Australia,” he said. While the Morrison Government’s Pacific Step Up program — which funds economic development in the region, was “by no means tokenistic”, he said a long-term strategy was needed and too often there was only focus during a crisis. “Australia’s done a lot to help these Pacific nations through COVID, but clearly, more is needed. We need more political engagement, we need more high-level Foreign Minister and Prime Ministerial engagement (and) way more investment in playing the long game,” he said. Australian National University Development Policy Centre expert Terence Wood said treating the current state of affairs as a catastrophe was unhelpful and likely to decrease Australia’s standing further. He said it was true that Australia’s aid-funding to the Solomon Islands had fallen as a broad trend, but this was partially because the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), a 14-year Australian-led peacekeeping mission, was wound down following increased stability in the region. However, under the last Labor government the aid budget “in general was on a trajectory of significant increase”. “That obviously came to a halt when Tony Abbott was elected, and in fact, the aid budget was slashed pretty significantly by the Abbott government,” he said. “If you imagine a sort of counterfactual world where Labor had stayed in power, I think it’s probably reasonable to assume that Solomons would be receiving more aid now than it currently is.” While China’s influence may not have been something Australia could starve off, he said it was also possible the Solomon Islands would have been more inclined to listen to its advice if it had “shown itself to be a better regional partner”. “(If Australia) had shown itself to be more concerned about climate change, for example, it might have been able to increase its soft power,” he said. Australian Strategic Policy Institute director of defence, strategy and national security Michael Shoebridge, however, said the deal was not like anything seen in the South Pacific before and what was known from leaked details was “disturbing”. “The leaked draft was very disturbing, because of its breadth, and some very specific things that it said,” he said. “The problem is, if it’s allowing Chinese naval ships to get logistic support out of the Solomons, it doesn’t really matter what you call it. “(That will mean) the Chinese military is more routinely in the South Pacific and they will bring the kind of tensions that we see in the South China Sea.” He said the Solomon Islands Prime Minister had always been “extremely critical” of Australia and he thought it was unlikely that climate change had impacted his decision. “He’s willing to use Chinese security forces to keep himself in power. So this is much more a story of Sogavare and Chinese money than it is (about) some bigger debate about climate change,” he said. Mr Shoebridge also did not believe that lack of foreign aid from Australia was to blame, pointing out that the Coalition and Labor were actually both proposing similar things for the region. The ALP has promised to set up a Pacific defence school, increase foreign aid by $525m over four years and expand the reach of ABC broadcasting in the region. It also said it would set up a dedicated agriculture visa stream under the existing Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme. Mr Morrison has accused Labor of simply promising to continue doing what the Government was already doing. Mr Shoebridge said he believed Australia should “open borders to the small Pacific States, and allow free entry to the Australian labour market by South Pacific workers” beyond existing visa schemes currently being promised by the two major parties. “As the effects of climate change happen, some of these small States are not going to be, and over time their populations will be mobile . . . the far better economic assistance is to have South Pacific people employed in Australia and New Zealand, and providing that money back home,” he said. “We know the Australian labour market has chronic shortages, and these South Pacific workers would fill real gaps that we have.”

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Solomon Islands security pact: Why did the Pacific nation turn to China after falling out with Australia?