Kyoda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Tensions have emerged in recent weeks between New Zealand and several Pacific island nations. Cook Island's Prime Minister Mark Brown has been accused of not properly consulting New Zealand of the country's upcoming China deal, which is expected to be penned in Beijing this week. Meanwhile, enzaid to Kiribas is under review, and Samoa has sought help from China in the aftermath
of the Monamanui sinking last year. This all comes as the Trump administration has frozen aid to developing nations, which some experts fear could push them closer to China. Today on the Front Page, University of Auckland retired international relations professor Stephen Hoadley is with us to discuss China's interest in the Pacific, the impact of that frozen aid, and what it means for New Zealand's relationship with some of our closest neighbors. First off, Stephen, we've had a good
relationship with our Pacific neighbors for decades. Now, Hey, what do you think has changed?
What has changed is China, nationalism, economic necessity. That's basically the three changes. They interlink in the sense that Pacific Islands have always been poor. They've depended on aid on remittances from Pacific Islanders who have come to New Zealand and Australia Hawaii, worked hard, made money, send it back home. But the leaders of the various Pacific Island countries are
faced with rising expectations. They've got television. They see how opulent our lifestyle is in New Zealand and other western countries, and the Pacific Island population want more of it, and they demand that. They're political leaders somehow organize jobs, aid remittances, grants and other sources of income so they can be fully employed. Otherwise they'll immigrant, They'll come to New Zealand and Australia Hawaii to work. That causes a brain drain.
It also means that necessary people in the islands are not doing the work that they should, and that brings China into the picture. China has had a relationship with the Pacific Islands going way back to the nineteen sixties. New Zealand was first in along with Australia but China wasn't far behind with economic aid projects ranging from government buildings to roads, to ports, to sports facilities, big sports complexes, communications and so forth. So the Chinese have right throughout
the Pacific area been benefactors economic benefactors. They've also raised debt. Chinese aid is not grant its debt, its loans, and this incurs debt. So Tonga, for example, is said to ohe maybe thirty percent of its GDP to China. Now it is in no position to ever repay that, so it is a worry and it makes Tonga more dependent
on Chinese wishes. So broadly, that's the picture in the Pacific Islands generally, that economic necessity, rising expectations, rising sense of nationalist identity in each of the island countries, encouraged buy what's happening in Europe and the United States, and the ready access to China, which is a willing partner, willing to lend infrastructure projects that look pretty good at first glance, and at least they do produce facilities that
the Pacific Islands can use. We can talk maybe more about what's wrong with many of those projects in the eyes of the Pacific leaders. Very few of them, with one exception, the Prime Minister of Samoa. Very few of them say no. They all say yes. I hope it'll come right in the long run.
The island nation of Samoa is treading more cautiously as China and the US looked a secure power in the Pacific waters. Its newest prime minister Fiami in Naomi and Mataafa reversed to promise the old government made to build a new port on China's dime, to the tune of one hundred million dollars. Mataafa called the project excessive for a nation already heavily indebted to Beijing. She indicated she would only approve investments that had clear benefits for Samoa.
It seems to be a renewed interest in the Pacific, which play good thing, but.
Not necessarily.
So.
China has grown its influence in the region for a while now. You mentioned that why are we always so surprised though when we hear about them assisting an aid or penning visa deals and the like.
Well, we're not surprised. What we concern with is the amount of dependency that the island countries will have on China. The Pacific islands are some of the smallest by population. When China has ten thousand diplomats, Pacific Islands may have ten or twenty diplomats to negotiate details of these various aid projects. So the concern of New Zealand and certainly more so Australia, many of Australian analysts are quite alarmed
about this is the amount of indebtedness. And the problem doesn't stop with just the debt ode to China, but the facilities that China installs often are not quite suitable to the tropical weather, the small scale and the lack of maintenance facilities and financial backup that the Pacific Islands have.
These large buildings require air conditioning, and the air conditioning requires electricians and electricity, and often they malfunction, and the Chinese electrical standards are different to ours, and so it's very difficult to keep these various projects productive and it's expensive relative to their very small budgets, and they become what we call white elephants, that is, unproductive projects that they are almost more trouble than their worth. At least.
This is the critique that some analysts in New Zealand and Australia have leveled against the Chinese projects. But this has been going on for a long time. The Chinese are improving. They have reorganized their aid projects and their aid program. They are consulting more freely with their Pacific partners, trying to scale their projects down. In some cases, they're actually working with New Zealand in Cook Islands a water reticulation project, and we think that's a very good side.
If the Chinese can look learn from us, those of us who have experience in the Pacific Islands, then they can scale down and make their projects more effective, and we would actually welcome that. We would welcome Chinese assistance to the Pacific Islands as we would welcome Japanese assistance, French assistance, American assistance. As long as it is economically viable, it doesn't create environmental disasters, doesn't create huge debt and
a huge maintenance bill. So there are some conditions and corruption. We want to curb corruption, which is also a problem under the table payments for approvals that have not gone through the Ministry of Finance or parliamentary process. So we do have some concerns. And New Zealand, by and large its aid program conforms with high quality standards. We think the Chinese aid programs don't quite meet those standards and that does cause us some concern.
What do you make of Foreign Minister Winston Peters comments around our relationship with the Pacific Nations recently? I'm thinking about the latest back and forth over the canceled Curebus meeting, for example, and the Cook Islands. Prime Minister Marke Brown doesn't seem at all too happy with New Zealand's approach over his China deal this week.
Now, this is the crux of the matter. China has had an economic relationship and a diplomatic relationship with the Pacific Islands for many years. It's the military aspect that is the new element. That China's navy is the largest in the world. That China is exploring blue water deployments. It's got satellite intelligence ships plying the oceans of the
world as submarines, and it wants basis. It wants support facilities, what we call them bases, support facilities with fuel, ammunition, rest and recreation facilities, spare parts the normal sorts of things that every navy would like to have distant from
their homeland. Now the Chinese are certainly more ambitious. They have their road and belt scheme right throughout Southeast Asia, the South Asia, even extending to Africa and even some countries in Europe, which is concerning to the United States because we feel some of these built and road projects, particularly port facilities, we feel that they could easily be
converted into navy support facilities. There is, they could become many bases, many military bases for the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy. Now this hasn't yet happened in the Pacific Islands, but we feel that China is on the verge in
Solomon Islands, in Curebus maybe now in Cook Islands. Because the agreements that China has signed with Solomon Islands also are not public their secret Australian journalists have been able to find the texts of the agreement and it does have clauses in it whereby the government of Solomon Islands can call upon China police and China military to support that government, no matter whether it's democratic or not, whether it's legitimate or not, but that government can call on
Chinese armed muscle to support that government. Now, this is what is concerning about the Cook Islands agreement. We don't know what's in it. If it's just infrastructure projects, okay, the normal concerns about financial viability, debt and maintenance sustainability
over a period of time. But if it contains, for example, a agreement to allow China to fish extensively in Cook Island's wide economic zone oceanic zone, and also to maintain fishery support facilities in one of the Cook Island's outer islands. Cook Island says fifteen, a group of fifteen different islands. We would be greatly concerned about that because we would feel that the Chinese fishing fleet is highly militarized, it's
highly subsidized, it's under the maritime militia of China. Whatever the fishing fleet does, we feel that the Chinese Coastguard and the Chinese Navy will not be far behind. And this is where the real concern comes. Now. Winston Peters hasn't enunciated that we don't want to inflame the situation. China is still our best trade partner. We don't want to irritate China unnecessarily. But if you're an Australian journalist,
you're not under those constraints. Australian geopolitical analysts have been very forthright in saying, look, this is the thin edge of the wedge. These fishery support facilities are on the track to militarization. And this brings the Chinese military into what previously has been a democratic, Christian, peaceful region of the world, that is the Oceanic Pacific, oceanic region of
the world. And this is the geopolitical shift or tilt if you wish, or change of balance if you wish, against the United States, Japan, France, Australia, New Zealand that have managed specific affairs for the last half century on the one hand, and the rising China on the other, challenging this management regime and claiming equal status in the Pacific Islands. All right, we grant China equal status in diplomacy, in economic aid, in commerce, legitimate commerce. We have no
problems with that, with some misgivings. But it's the military expansion that these secretive, comprehensive strategic agreements seem to hint at that we take exception too.
Clearly.
Winston Peters feels that the Cook Islands has breached its constitutional relationship and agreement with New Zealand by not disclosing, failing to disclose what is in these agreements he's about to sign in Beijing now. I took to Prime Minister Mirke Brown last week and he said that they would
reveal everything once these agreements were signed. It's a bit late, and clearly he's put New Zealand into this category despite the fact that the Cooklands has a constitutional arrangement with New Zealand.
When it comes to those agreements and the Pacific neighbors meeting with China and allowing more Chinese collaboration in their part of the world, have we done enough to still be considered, I guess, their best friend? Or is it a case of kind of you snooze, you lose? I'm thinking about you know, Peter's ordering a review into New Zealand's overseas aid income. For example, for New Zealand, more than sixty percent of that overseas A goes to the Pacific.
Have we done enough for them or have we forced their hand to look elsewhere?
It does indicate the dilemma that New Zealand and Australia and all the other like minded countries that we have good partnerships with face. They want fiscal responsibility, They want to audit their aid programs. To make sure that the aid goes where it should go and not into the pockets of corrupt politicians. We might sure there's efficiency and environmental sustainability in whatever project it might be. And so from the Pacific Island point of view, this is a
big nuisance. It requires a lot of people, a lot of paperwork, a lot of research, a lot of reporting, and the Chinese don't require that. See so that from the Pacific Island point of view, the Chinese offered to come in and set up a sports complex, for example, as they did for the Pacific Games in Solomon Islands, and the Chinese say, look, we'll take care of all of that. Just allocate the land and we will start
and build from the ground up with minimum fuss. We won't require democratic and human rights accounting, we won't require a whole lot of audit team. We can do all of that for you. It's enormously attractive for a government that small understaff, doesn't have the kind of expertise and the kind of requirements that say New Zealand does. So it's a dilemma. So Winston Peters says, we're going to
review the Caribous aid program. That's one in particular because Carabus hasn't answered the phone, hasn't talked to Winston Peters, hasn't consulted. We don't know where the aid is going and we don't want it going to the wrong places. As a consequence, New Zealand could threaten to cut off the aid. What happens then China steps in. It's a marvelous opportunity for the Chinese to say, look, New Zealand are not trustworthy. You know when they're going gets tough,
they cut off your aid. We are your friends. And the Chinese then come in they replace the AID projects with their own project. Suddenly Caribos is oriented to China diplomatically, it already is. It switched this recognition from the Republic of China Taiwan to the People's Republic of China Beijing. So they're already diplomatically switched, as Solomon Islands has done as well. So the question is given that New Zealand does not have deep pockets, it does not have unlimited resources.
Nikola Willis is reducing the budget for domestic services of all kinds, and New Zealand and Australia is in a similar position, not quite as dire. The United States has got Trump with Elon Musk, cutting aid and cutting different government departments back. So the Western countries are really in a poor position to balance and to offer attractive alternatives to China. So China is at the moment winning in small steps, winning in Solomon Islands, winning in Carabos, maybe
winning in Cook Islands, we don't know. Maybe in Palau, which is a small country linked to the United States, much like Cook Islands is linked to New Zealand, quite close to China, and the Chinese are making a big push there. There's some some military deep water port assets there that China could find quite attractive. So the balance
of influence in the Pacific region is slowly shifting. The Chinese are playing a skillful and well financed game and they are winning one by one moves in this game. And with Trump at the helm in the US pulling back from commitments, aid and support from traditional friends and allies, the Chinese are going to have the freedom to make very attractive offers to Pacific island leaders and to gain even greater influence in Australia. New Zealand, relatively small countries
don't have the resources to step into the void. Maybe Japan does. We're hoping Japan will come, maybe Taiwan, maybe South Korea. We're pleased at Britain and France are upping their military presence in the Pacific region again to balance China, but it's not enough. And the Chinese have a multi proned policy diplomatic, economic, and military, and plan DestinE as well that we find it's very hard to stand against.
So at the moment we have to ruefully conclude that the Chinese are moving closer and deeper into the Pacific, and we will try to match their offers with better
economic aid and more consultation. If the local government, like Mark Brown's Cook Islands government, turns his back on us and it goes to Beijing, which he is doing right now, and comes back with an agreement that Beijing will have access to their economic ocean waters, their fish and resources and deep sea bed minerals, and will have shore facilities to support only the economic exploitation but maybe also some of the fisheries exploitation. There is not a great deal
we can do about that. I guess you might say, well, why should we continue with the association with Cook Islands? Should New Zealand simply say no, let's discontinue and let Cook Islands be independent. Cook Islanders could not come to New Zealand and be New Zealand citizens. They would have to have their own passports and their own visas. What would happen to the twenty or thirty thousand Cook Islanders who live in Auckland and surrounding areas doing useful work here?
Would they suddenly become aliens? And would we have to do a Donald Trump consider treating them as aliens which might include deportation. Well, I certainly hope what Mark Brown is doing. And Winston Peters who has long enmity to the Cook Islands going back to the wineback books scandal and the banking dodgy banking that Cook Islands engaged in with money laundering and other dodgy activities back in the
nineteen eighties and nineties. So Winston Peters has a long history of concern that Cook Islands is sailing too close to the legal wind and Winston, as you know, forthright and going to call them out on it. Well, if that relationship breaks down, is there a future for the Cook Islands as a freely associated state with New Zealand? Or are we looking at a divorce with Cook Islands becoming fully independent. It's already recognized by fifty states as
an independent government. It has diplomatic relations with many many countries, including the US and Australia and Canada and New Zealand. Would it be impossible to conceive of not just a dispute, a domestic dispute, which it is now because New Zidan and Cook Islands are linked, but a become a separation and then maybe down the track a divorce. So these are some of the things that we want to consider.
We have a very good relationship with the Cook Islands and also it's people, but you know, we have points of difference. Do we have an obligation under our constitutional arrangement to make sure around issues of defense and security that we're very transparent about all of that. We need to wait and see what has actually been agreed or not agreed, and then we'll make our judgments.
Okay, will we completely drop the gold here? We had no idea what was going on when Ston Peter still has no idea what was going on?
How are the loops New Zealand and ms of what the.
Cook Islands is even up to us?
Well, that's why under questioning, you've actually seen him say that we want to expect transparency and he's calling that out and that's what we're saying, and that's why you do have a dispute between the two countries.
How should our government proceed here when it comes to the Pacific or would really anything just be too little, too.
Late at the moment? Diplomacy first is always, and so Winston Peters is doing. He's gone to the media, he has made it quite public. He's unhappy with Mark Brown. He's demanded that Mark Brown consult, which is an agreed arrangement between the countries with the twenty and twenty one reaffirmation of the relationship, and Mark Brown has not done so. So Winston Peters feels Mark Brown is in the wrong.
Many Cook Islanders have now begun to make statements on social media saying, look, we're appalled because Mark Brown is jeopardizing our free movement in and out of New Zealand and we value that ability to work and live and visit and get medical assistance from New Zealand. So Mark Brown is not popular in his own country. Is it too late or too late? There could be a change of heart the agreement that Mark Brown signs with China
could be benign. He could come to his senses, or he could be more accommodating and consult with Winston Peters and make some adjustments in a way that New Zealand would be satisfied that Cook Islands is doing the right thing for the Cook Island people and not tilting the geopolitical balance in favor of China. So there's always hope. But at the end of the day, if it comes a straight fight between a straight contest between China and New Zealand in the Cook Islands, China is likely to
win bigger. They have more resources, they're more unscrupulous, they're determined to press forward. They've got a global vision of equality with the United States, and we think that really translates that into Chinese leadership, not just influence, but Chinese leadership.
New Zealand is certainly in no position to offer Cook Islands anything relating anything as valuable is what China can offer to the Cork Islands if China really exerts its diplomatic, economic and military will to increasing its influence in the Cook Islands.
Thanks for joining us, Steven. That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzidherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.