FRIDAY, MAY 27 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
BY MICHAEL E. MILLERSYDNEY — China’s foreign minis-
ter began a Pacific tour Thursday
to push a sweeping multilateral
security deal that has deepened
concerns over the country’s grow-
ing assertiveness in the region and
left Australia scrambling to repair
relations with island neighbors.
As Wang Yi kicked off an eight-
country tour in the Solomon Is-
lands on Thursday, his Australian
counterpart, Penny Wong, was in
Fiji — by Pacific standards, a
stone’s throw away — arguing that
her nation should remain the re-
gion’s closest partner.
“Australia will be a partner that
doesn’t come with strings at-
tached, nor imposing unsustain-
able financial burdens,” she said in
a thinly veiled dig at China’s lend-
ing policies. “We are a partner that
won’t erode Pacific priorities or
Pacific institutions. We believe in
transparency.”
A day earlier, it was revealed
that China is seeking a deal with 10
Pacific island countries over polic-
ing, cybersecurity, maritime sur-
veillance, fishing rights and the
creation of a free-trade area.
The proposed deal, f irst report-
ed by Reuters, appeared to dispel
any notion of a reset between Aus-
tralia and China, which has waged
a two-year trade war against the
smaller country. It also under-
scored the challenge facing the
Australian government, which
was elected Saturday after prom-
ising Pacific neighbors more aid
and action on climate change.
“We need to respond to this
because this is China seeking to
increase its influence in the region
of the world where Australia has
been the security partner of choice
since the Second World War,” Aus-
tralian Prime Minister Anthony
Albanese told the Australian
Broadcasting Corp. on Thursday.
Some Pacific islands see the
competition as a chance to secure
funds for ailing infrastructure and
sluggish economic development.
But there were also signs of
pushback against China’s pro-
posed deal, with the president of
the Federated States of Micronesia
writing a scathing letter to fellow
Pacific leaders urging them to re-
ject the proposal because it would
undermine their sovereignty and
spark a new “Cold War” between
China and the West.
The Micronesian leader, David
Panuelo, called the deal a “smoke-
screen” hiding a Chinese attempt
to “acquire access and control of
our region.”
Beijing’s broad Pacific proposal
comes on the heels of the security
agreement it signed with the Solo-
mon Islands last month. That deal,
which some analysts have said
could lead to a Chinese military
base 1,000 miles from Australia’s
shores, sparked concerns in Can-
berra, Washington and beyond.
Wang said he hoped the bilater-
al relationship could be an exam-
ple for other Pacific island nations
and pledged to do “everything
within our power” to protect the
domestic unity of the Solomon
Islands and support economic de-
velopment, according to a Chinese
Foreign Ministry statement.
The two sides agreed to new
projects under China’s Belt and
Road Initiative, including prefer-
ential tax policies for goods ex-
ported to China and further coop-
eration on fishing, lumber, min-
ing, epidemic prevention and nat-
ural disaster relief.During Australia’s election
campaign, Albanese accused his
opponent, conservative incum-
bent Scott Morrison, of “dropping
the ball” by failing to prevent the
deal. And Wong called it “the
worst Australian foreign policy
blunder in the Pacific since the
end of World War II.”
But that language could rankle
Pacific leaders, said Tess Newton
Cain, a Pacific analyst at Griffith
University in Brisbane. “It indi-
cates a presupposition or premise
that somehow Solomon Islands’
foreign policy is Australia’s re-
sponsibility.”
Wong took a different tone in
Fiji on Thursday, saying Australia
had “neglected” its neighbors by
failing to act on climate change.
Albanese has also said he will in-
crease aid, diplomacy and Austral-
ian media in the region and ex-
pand opportunities for Pacific is-landers to work in and perma-
nently move to Australia.
Those efforts are an attempt to
counter China’s new “high energy,
high intensity” approach to the
region, Newton Cain said. China’s
proposed multilateral security
agreement was “significant,” she
said, because it signals “a shift
from structuring Pacific engage-
ment on a bilateral basis to multi-
lateral approaches.”
But Panuelo’s letter showed
there was a degree of trepidation.
He said the draft agreement and
accompanying five-year “action
plan” showed China had “faithful-
ly done its homework, as the
choice of words are, on their face
and at first glance, attractive to
many of us — perhaps all of us.”
“They speak of democracy and
equity and freedom and justice,
and compare and contrast these
ideas with concepts that we, asPacific islands, would want to
align ourselves with, such as sus-
tainable development, tackling
Climate Change, and economic
growth,” he wrote. “Where the
problems arise are in the details,
and the details suggest that China
is seeking ... to acquire access and
control of our region, with the
result being the fracturing of re-
gional peace, security, and stabili-
ty.”
In addition to the Solomon Is-
lands, Wang will visit Kiribati, Sa-
moa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New
Guinea, Timor-Leste and Fiji,
where he will host a meeting with
Pacific foreign ministers in which
he is expected to pitch the pro-
posed multilateral deal.
As Australia tries to dissuade
Pacific island countries from tak-
ing that deal, it will be aided by its
change in administration. The
country’s standing in the region
suffered because of Morrison’s
tepid approach to combating cli-
mate change, said Graeme Smith,
an expert on China and the Pacific
at Australian National University.
Albanese’s somewhat more am-
bitious climate plan offered an
opening for improved relations,
Smith said, although many Pacific
island nations will be hoping Aus-
tralia goes further. The prime min-
ister’s pitch to increase opportuni-
ties to work in and immigrate to
Australia was a savvy one, he add-
ed, because it offered something
China could not.
But Smith warned against view-
ing Pacific leaders as pawns in a
geopolitical chess game. The Solo-
mon Islands’ prime minister, Ma-
nasseh Sogavare, is “a very canny
player who knows exactly what
he’s doing” signing a security
agreement with China.The visit has also served to
highlight one way in which some
Solomon Islanders feel that grow-
ing ties with China have hurt.
The country has long boasted a
robust and independent media.
But the government barred all but
three local journalists from at-
tending a news conference with
Wang and Foreign Minister Jere-
miah Manele, stipulating that
they could ask only one question
— of Manele.
“What’s the sense of having a
news conference?” asked Dorothy
Wickham, a j ournalist who said
she had never seen such secrecy in
her country. The security deal be-
came public only after a draft was
leaked in March, she noted.
She feared the d eal would mean
Chinese-style media restrictions.
“It’s fine with us if they apply that
to the news in China,” she said.
“But if they start applying it here?
We have a constitution that gives
us freedom to do our work.”
At the same time, she said many
Solomon Islanders would wel-
come Chinese assistance in devel-
oping the country after riots dev-
astated the capital last year.
“Something needs to be done
quickly,” she said. “And if China is
going to be able to provide these
things, then I think Solomon Is-
landers are going to be happy to
see the infrastructure go up.”
She also noted that the security
agreement and Wang’s visit had
spurred Australia, the United
States and New Zealand to take
notice of the small island country.
“For us, it’s been a good thing,” she
said. “Finally, the attention is fo-
cused on us now.”Christian Shepherd in Taipei and Lyric
Li in Seoul contributed to this report.China pushes Pacific deal as Australia seeks to repair regional ties
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
C hinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, center, is escorted from his
plane in Honiara early Thursday by Solomon Islands Foreign
Minister Jeremiah Manele, left, at the start of an eight-nation tour.BY LILY KUOChina’s premier said in an
emergency meeting Wednesday
that the Chinese economy faces
“grim challenges,” in an unusually
stark warning that comes as coro-
navirus controls have paralyzed
parts of the world’s second-largest
economy.
Premier Li Keqiang, along with
other top officials, spoke to more
than 100,000 representatives
from provincial, city and county
levels of government in a telecon-
ference hosted by China’s cabinet,
according to state media reports.
Li called on local governments to
help stabilize the economy, which
he said was at risk of contracting
during the second quarter.
Citing unforeseen factors such
as continued outbreaks of the cor-
onavirus and the war in Ukraine,
Li said his chief goal was to ensure
that the economy expands in the
second quarter.
“This target is not high, and it is
far worse than the growth target of
5.5% that we proposed at the be-
ginning of the year,” he said, refer-
ring to the 2022 GDP growth tar-
get. “But it is based on reality and
is what we must do,” he said, ac-
cording to a transcript of his
speech posted online.
Li said many international or-
ganizations have revised down
their expectations for China’s
growth — with UBS dropping its
forecast to 3 percent this year. “We
cannot accept this,” he said, noting
that the economy had slowed that
much only once, in 1990, over the
past 40 years.
His comments, delivered in a
meeting unusual for its scale and
format, underscore the difficulty
China faces as it tries to balance
economic growth — which has
long underpinned the ruling Chi-
nese Communist Party’s popular
support — with the political goals
of the country’s top leader, Xi Jin-
ping.
Xi is seen as spearheading some
of the main policies blamed for
curtailing growth, from the strict
zero-covid policy to a broad crack-
down on the technology industry
and other private sectors in an
effort to exert more party control
over the economy. Li’s warning on
Wednesday, the latest of several
issued by the premier, also under-
scores the challenges Xi faces as he
prepares to break with tradition
and take on a controversial third
term later this year.
Li, who as the No. 2 in the
country is traditionally charged
with leading the economy, hasbeen sidelined for much of his
tenure. But in the past few
months, he has stepped into the
spotlight to urge changes that
would bring the economy back on
track.
In Wednesday’s teleconference,
Li said his country’s economy
faced hardships that are in some
ways greater than in 2020, at the
beginning of the coronavirus out-
break. He cited indicators includ-
ing employment, industrial pro-
duction, power generation and
cargo freight as all having trended
lower in recent months.
According to the National Bu-
reau of Statistics, the unemploy-
ment rate in urban areas in April
reached 6.1 percent, the highest
since March 2020.
The unemployment rate for
those between the ages of 16 and
24 was 18.2 percent, the worst
since the government began
tracking monthly employment
data in 2005.
“We are having this meeting
because there is no time to lose,” Li
said.
He stressed that many small
and medium-size enterprises have
struggled during the pandemic as
a result of rising costs and weaken-
ing demand. Li called on govern-
ments to strike a better balancebetween economic growth and
coronavirus measures.
China is struggling to contain
its worst outbreak since the pan-
demic began, as the more trans-
missible omicron variant contin-
ues to breach strict quarantine
measures. Almost two months of
chaotic management of lockdown
measures in Shanghai, a financial
hub and China’s most populouscity, has especially weakened pub-
lic faith in the zero-covid policy.
The city, which plans to begin lift-
ing restrictions on June 1, said
Thursday that 350,000 people
were still affected by covid con-
trols.
A survey by the American
Chamber of Commerce in China
released this month found that
more than 50 percent of U.S. busi-nesses have delayed or reduced
their investments in China be-
cause of the recent outbreaks. Half
of respondents said foreign talent
is significantly less willing to relo-
cate to China because of the covid
policies.Lyric Li in Seoul, Pei-Lin Wu and Vic
Chiang in Taipei contributed to this
report.‘No time to lose’: Top Chinese o∞cial sounds alarm over economy
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