A Pentagon report released last month that said China was likely training for air strikes against US and allied targets will have brought China’s emerging power projection capabilities into the Pacific into stark and urgent relief among policymakers in Washington. The report indicates these training flights are also designed to influence island nations in the South Pacific, where China’s advance southward is already viewed with concern by the US.

“With a strong foothold in the [South China Sea] now, China can project military power across the Pacific Islands at a time when its fishing fleets are also increasing their presence there,” said Ben Bohane, a Vanuatu-based reporter who has written extensively about Beijing’s growing presence across Oceania.

China’s bases in the South China Sea’s Spratly and Paracel island chains, from which Peoples Liberation Army Air Force strategic bombers can reach well into Oceania, now back Beijing’s economic and political ambitions in various Pacific Islands like Samoa and Tonga. For example, China have provided the island nation of Samoa will hundreds of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure and bank loans to ‘fund’ development.

It will be impossible for a country like Samoa, run by a proven corrupt Prime Minister, to fulfill it’s loan obligations. Right now, as this report is being made, a brand new airport is being built in Samoa, a country where, per head of population, there is absolutely no need for it. At all. Yes, it’s backed by China. You see, even small loans go a long way in countries like Tonga, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, but the ability to repay or negotiate refinancing is testing Pacific governments who must now make politically unpopular decisions to service the debts.

That pressure is clearly being felt in Nauru, one of the smallest of the Pacific region’s states. It butted heads with China recently as it hosted the Pacific Island Forum, an intergovernmental organization that aims to enhance regional cooperation. The clash was ostensibly over a perceived as over-demanding China delegation, but the brouhaha also spoke to the frustration many states feel with China as it aggressively ramps up pressure on individual Pacific states to cut their diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

Nauru President Baron Waqa refused to allow China’s representative to address the forum ahead of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Both Tuvalu and Nauru have maintained ties with Taiwan despite Beijing’s pressures. Waqa said China’s lead diplomat, Du Qiwen, had been “very insolent” and a “bully”, according to a Reuters report of the incident. After demanding an apology, Waqa said “from this meeting in Nauru, going forward, we will not allow this kind of behavior in our Pacific meeting space,” the report said.

These tensions seem set to escalate as the first round of repayments come due for relatively massive infrastructure loans Pacific nations have taken out with China. In September 2018, Tonga began a repayment schedule for a US$115 million loan from China to redevelop infrastructure in its capital Nuku’alofa and expand infrastructure in rural parts of the island. For China, the US$115 million loan is barely a rounding error in its estimated US$1 trillion BRI budget. For Tonga, however, it’s almost one-third of its annual gross domestic product and will double the island’s national debt load

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