Reuters :
China has emerged as the second-largest aid donor in the South Pacific, figures published on Thursday by a think tank show, illustrating its growing influence in a region traditionally dominated by Australia and New Zealand.
China’s $1.3 billon-worth of donations and concessionary loans since 2011 trails Australia’s $6.6 billion, figures compiled by the Australia-funded Lowy Institute show, but it is more than New Zealand’s $1.2 billion.
Spending by China, criticised by many of its neighbours for island building in the South China Sea, is almost 9 percent of total aid donations in the South Pacific. If pledged aid is included, China’s promises total $5.9 billion, or nearly a third of all aid pledged to the region’s 14 countries by 62 donors.
“There is definitely an element of briefcase diplomacy in the Pacific,” the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands programme director, Jonathan Pryke, one of two lead researchers, told Reuters by phone from Samoa.
“They are engaged in buying support,” he said, adding that China’s sway was not “as overwhelming as you might get the sense from the narrative that’s been played out this year and last”.
The Lowy analysis lands as Australia-China relations sour. Australia has moved to both check Chinese influence domestically and step up Pacific engagement, along with New Zealand and the United States.
Australia recently outbid China to lay an internet cable to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, which the research ranks as the two largest aid recipients in the region, while also expressing concern at the scale of China’s lending.
