Taipei, Taiwan — Australia signed two multi-million dollar deals with Nauru and Papua New Guinea last week that analysts say will help Canberra counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific.
The deals, which support development in Nauru and pledge to pour hundreds of millions over the next 10 years into the establishment of a rugby team in Papua New Guinea, also give Australia some power to prevent the two island nations from signing security-related deals with China.
Beijing has been aggressively expanding its cooperation with islands in the Pacific in recent years, to the concern of Australia, the U.S. and other allies in the region.
Under the multi-million dollar deal that Australia signed on December 9 with Nauru, Canberra will offer $89 million to the Pacific Island country over five years, providing key development support in banking, telecommunication, and security.
In exchange, Australia can veto any engagements by third countries in the Pacific island country’s security and critical infrastructure sectors.
During a signing ceremony at Australia’s Parliament House on December 9, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the agreement as “a serious responsibility and a sign of the enduring respect between our two nations.”
Nauruan President David Adeang said the treaty would help his country, which faces serious financial challenges, strengthen its economy and address critical challenges.
Mihai Sora, director of the Pacific Islands program at Lowy Institute in Australia, says Australia has to make such agreements despite the cost.
“China has an increasing security access to the Pacific, whether through policing, or military land, air or sea assets, and that raises the cost of Australia’s defense posture,” Sora told VOA in a video interview. “Locking in this legal agreement with Nauru is one part of the effort to maintain Australia’s access and to deny China’s access to that space.”
Last week, Australia also struck a deal with Papua New Guinea, or PNG, that will see Canberra provide $384 million over 10 years to help the Pacific Island country set up a rugby team that will start competing in Australia’s national rugby league in 2028. The funding is also expected to help build a compound to accommodate players and offer tax breaks to recruit players.
In return, PNG signed a separate pact that reaffirms Australia as the country’s major security partner.
While many details of the two agreements remain confidential, analysts and media outlets briefed by Canberra said the deals allow Australia to withdraw funding for the rugby team if PNG signs a security agreement with a country outside the so-called “Pacific Family,” which excludes China.
“We know from briefings with government officials and media reports that there is a security commitment that PNG has agreed to not to sign a policing or military deal with China,” Sora told VOA.
Some PNG analysts say the agreement is part of Australia’s attempt to build closer ties with PNG’s civil society.
“Australia realized that all this aid and budgetary support that it has been giving to PNG hasn’t translated into buying support for them at the grassroots level and since a lot of people in PNG support Australian rugby teams, [Canberra] picks a sport that a good portion of the PNG population is crazy over, with a hope that it could generate more support for Australia at the grassroots level in PNG,” Michael Kabuni, an analyst who previously taught at the University of Papua New Guinea, told VOA in a video interview.
During a ceremony announcing the deal in Sydney on December 12, PNG Prime Minister James Marape said the agreement could help his country foster domestic unity and unite PNG and Australia together “in ways that matter most, people to people.”
Analysts say the agreements with Nauru and PNG are part of the more “assertive” diplomatic push in the Pacific that Australia initiated in 2022 after China signed a secretive security agreement with the Solomon Islands.
“Australia and a lot of its allies, including the United States, were caught off guard with the security deal between the Solomon Islands and China, and by signing the deals with these Pacific Island countries, Canberra demonstrates that it wants to show itself as the partner of choice, and some of the Pacific states are responding,” Henryk Szadziewski, an expert on Pacific affairs at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told VOA by phone.
While Australia may limit China’s security presence in the Pacific region through these deals, Szadziewski said Pacific island countries can still deepen relations with Beijing in other sectors, including education and trade.
“The ways that Chinese companies can enter the economic sector in the Pacific region are not excluded by these deals and this has been a key way for China to make inroads in the Pacific region in terms of influence,” he added.
VOA reached out to the Chinese foreign ministry and the Chinese embassy in Australia for comment but has yet to receive a response.
During a meeting with Samoa’s prime minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa in Beijing last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China “is willing to make empowering Pacific island countries to tackle climate change a priority in its cooperation with these countries.”
Now that Australia has obtained some power to veto security deals in some Pacific countries, Sora said Canberra has to ensure its own priorities don’t overshadow Pacific island countries’ interests and needs.
“Canberra has retained the security manager role [in the Pacific] so the challenge is to demonstrate that Pacific countries’ security needs aren’t subordinate and their own priorities don’t come after Australia’s interests,” he told VOA.
Australia’s focus will be “proving to Pacific countries that their security needs will now be better met as a result of these agreements because anything short of that will leave themselves open to criticism,” Sora added.
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