03.02.2024, 13:45
Ist ja ein wenig stiller geworden um diesen Sachverhalt - aber vom Tisch ist er nicht...
Schneemann
Zitat:Solomons shows it's not easy for China, U.S. to woo some small nationshttps://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Interna...ll-nations
Superpowers subject to political vagaries of Pacific island state
(January 23, 2024)
HONIARA -- Chinatown in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, still bears scars two years after demonstrators demanding that the pro-China government step down in November 2021 turned riotous.
But perhaps ironically, China's involvement in the Solomons' economic development, especially on Guadalcanal, where the capital is located, has deepened in the two years since the unrest. "We have huge thanks, millions of acknowledgments, to the Chinese government. When athletics started in [the] Solomons, we did not have a running track," Moses Ohai'ihi, a member of the national track and field team, told Nikkei, referring to the new National Stadium where the Pacific Games, a quadrennial regional sports festival, were held through Dec. 2. [...]
When the riots broke out and destroyed Chinatown, Australia sent police to quell the disturbance. Three months later, China sent its own police squad to protect ethnic Chinese who began immigrating to the area in the 1970s. Both squads remain on the island, but Honiara has increasingly relied on China in the past few years. [...]
According to the Lowy Institute, a think tank based in Sydney, China's total development finance spending on the island country -- home to just over 700,000 people -- nearly quadrupled to $41 million in the first two years after diplomatic relations were established.
The island states of the Pacific together make up just 0.4% of the world's landmass, but their exclusive economic zones amount to 13% of the worldwide total. It is thus only natural for China, which wants to secure key sea lanes in the Pacific, to cozy up to these countries. [...]
For a small country like the Solomons, closer relations with large countries are meant to offer greater economic and social stability. But in forging closer ties with China, the Solomons has instead become more volatile, due partly to the country's historical connections to China's rival Taiwan. [...]
The government signed a security agreement with China in April 2022. A draft of the agreement reads, "China may ... make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands." Alarmed, the U.S. opened an embassy in Honiara in February 2023 and signed a defense cooperation agreement with neighboring Papua New Guinea in May. [...] Leaders in the Solomons may have been trying to play Washington and Beijing off against each other to gain economic support from both, but they now find themselves at the forefront of U.S.-China tensions.
Schneemann