China’s ambitions in the Pacific are a concern for some Pacific Island leaders, US National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell said on Thursday.
However, a growing US partnership with allies in the region aims to address issues such as climate change, health and technology links, he said.
Campbell spoke after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted a meeting with foreign ministers from the Partners in the Blue Pacific — a group formed in June that includes the US, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the UK.
Photo: AFP
US officials briefing reporters on the meeting said that Canada and Germany intend to formally join the initiative, which seeks to coordinate assistance to the strategically vital region in the face of competition from China.
“As we’ve seen in some instances, clearly China has ambitions in the Pacific, some of which have caused concern among Pacific Island leaders,” Campbell said.
The group’s agenda would be guided by Pacific Island nations’ needs, he added.
“When we engage with Pacific Islanders, one of the first things that they say is that for us national security really involves our environment and how climate change is an existential issue for them,” Campbell said.
The Partners in the Blue Pacific event, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, comes ahead of a summit US President Joe Biden plans to host with Pacific island leaders on Wednesday and Thursday next week.
The Biden administration has said that the summit reflects its commitment to Pacific Island nations, whose leaders said this month that Washington should accept their priorities, making climate change — not superpower competition — the most urgent security task.
Campbell said that the US, Australia and Japan are involved in a number of efforts to advance undersea cables in the Pacific.
Campbell said two of the initiatives the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue — the US, Japan, India and Australia — want to focus on in the Pacific are maritime domain awareness and increasing island states’ communication links with nations such as Japan, Australia and India.
“That can only be accomplished through the laying of ... undersea cables, and so I think the challenge is before us,” he said. “We think it’s important, and it will require financing and capacity, not just of any one state, but our combined efforts together.”
In a separate meeting, Blinken and his South Korean and Japanese counterparts affirmed a shared commitment to support Pacific Island nations.
A joint statement said that they pledged to look at ways to better help the island nations access climate finance, and reaffirmed support for their efforts to boost maritime security and fisheries protection.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS