Australian Minister for Defence Peter Dutton yesterday accused China of paying bribes to win international deals, but refused to say if the corruption extended to Beijing’s newly signed defense pact with the Solomon Islands.
Dutton made the remarks as his conservative government faced questions in the run-up to May 21 general elections about how China apparently outmaneuvered Australia by securing the agreement.
The deal shocked the Solomon Islands’ traditional allies Australia and the US, which fear it could give China a military foothold in the South Pacific less than 2,000km from Australia’s coast.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The Chinese don’t play by our rules,” Dutton said.
“If you look at what has happened in Africa, there are corrupt payments being made,” he told Sky News Australia. “We can never compete with that sort of playbook. We have values and we have the rule of law that we abide by.”
Asked specifically if he believed corrupt payments were made to forge China’s deal with the Solomon Islands, which was announced by Beijing on April 19, the minister said he could not comment.
“The reality is that China has changed,” he said. “China’s incredibly aggressive acts of foreign interference, the preparedness to pay bribes to beat other countries to deals: That’s the reality of modern China.”
A draft of the pact shocked countries in the region when it was leaked last month, particularly measures that would allow Chinese naval deployments to the Solomons.
Australian lawmaker Jim Chalmers of the opposition Labor Party accused Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government of “undermining our national security with all of this chest-beating on China at the same time as their incompetence has meant that China is setting up on our doorstep.”
Meanwhile, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce yesterday said that the Solomon Islands should be “really careful” in its security pact with China.
Joyce told Australian Broadcasting Corp that while he accepted the Solomon Islands’ pledge that there would not be a permanent Chinese military presence on the territory, “if you invite a totalitarian regime into your country, of course it will have effect on your sovereignty.”
“That is something that is not fiction,” Joyce said. “You can go to other countries where the Chinese government are involved and it most definitely affects their sovereignty.”
Joyce pointed to Tajikistan, Myanmar and a similar deal in Djibouti where at times thousands of Chinese military personnel are stationed, a “great problem” for Australia, he said.
He said that Australia would join the US to “respond accordingly” should China set up a de facto permanent military presence or power-projection capabilities.
“The United States is in lock step with Australia,” he said. “We know what the Chinese wishes are and we don’t want their wishes to happen.”
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s government severed ties with Taiwan in September 2019 in favor of diplomatic relations with China.
In November last year, protests against Sogavare’s rule sparked violent riots in the capital, during which much of the city’s Chinatown was torched.
While the unrest was partly fueled by poverty and unemployment, anti-China sentiment was also cited as playing a role.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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