| CHINA'S THIRD WAVE, Part 2 |
By Bertil Lintner - Asia Times Online - http://www.atimes.com
18 April 2007
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea, and NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga - There is nothing particularly unusual about the food at Ang's Chinese restaurant. In fact, the roast duck served there is excellent and the Lonely Planet guidebook assures you that its hot-and-sour soups are especially tasty. Rather, it's the eatery's ambiance that is a tad offsetting.
The yard is surrounded by high walls topped with razor wire and surveillance cameras. Two security guards watch the entrance and open the sliding gate only if the callers appear to be genuine dining customers. Those allowed entry are met by another steel door guarded by more watchmen, who not only shut but lock the door behind the restaurant's guests. Only then may they enjoy Ang's oriental fare in relative peace.
Welcome to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea - and, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the worst place to live among 130 world capitals and major cities. Major hotels advise their guests not to venture out on foot - even in broad daylight in the poshest downtown areas.
Unemployment rates here hover anywhere between 70% and 90% and crime has become a way of life for gangs of young men born into a culture where tribal warfare, vendettas and violence are deeply ingrained. Add the easy access to firearms in urban areas, and it's not surprising that most of Port Moresby's homes resemble high security prisons and that the 50,000 Western expatriates who lived there when independence was achieved from Australia in 1975 have since dwindled to a few thousand.
But, as the chatter in Ang's restaurant indicates, newly-arrived mainland Chinese migrants are fast filling the gap as the impoverished country’s leading businessmen, contractors and import-export dealers. Throughout history, Chinese migrants have shown a willingness to endure harsh living conditions to prosper economically in new countries - and the Chinese in Port Moresby are no exception.
Nowadays, Chinese migration to areas like far flung Papua New Guinea is also welcome in Beijing, which is seemingly eager to establish a human presence along with its expanding business influence in the resource-rich region. In a local newspaper, former Papua New Guinea defense minister Jerry Singirok recently wrote that, "Australia has always considered Papua New Guinea its backyard [but] ... since 2000, Papua New Guinea has increased its bilateral relations with China in areas of trade, investment and the military ... China is here to stay."
According to Australian National University (ANU) senior lecturer Benjamin Reilly, China’s military assistance to the few Pacific island states that maintain military forces - Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga and Papua New Guinea - has so far been modest, consisting mainly of training and logistical support rather than weaponry, but has increased sharply in recent years. Its business investments, on the other hand, have been more overt.
Following the money
In October 2006, Papua New Guinea's Governor-General, Paulias Matane, met Chinese President Hu Jintao and welcomed Chinese investment in the country’s mining, forestry and fishing sectors. China had already invested in the development of the US$1 billion Ramu nickel mine in remote Mandang province, where working conditions are so harsh that the country’s labor unions have threatened to shut it down. With those investments has followed a steady stream of Chinese migrants - many of whom appear set to stay for the long term. According to official estimates, there are currently about 10,000 Chinese citizens in Papua New Guinea - though some believe that figure is considerably higher. Many of them are here illegally, but Papua New Guinean passports, and therefore citizenship, are not difficult to obtain. In 2000, for instance, a major passport scam involving high-ranking Papua New Guinea officials from the department of foreign affairs was uncovered - which until it was closed down likely benefited many Chinese migrants seeking permanent residence.
Meanwhile, growing Chinese financial aid appears to have tempered any official concerns about growing Chinese migration and has definitely lessened the economic blow when traditional aid donors such as Australia threaten to cut their assistance because of official corruption, nepotism and abuse of power.
"China's rising status as an economic and military power is becoming an important pillar for developing countries like Papua New Guinea," Tarcy Eri, a high-ranking foreign ministry official, said at China's national day celebrations on October 1 in 2005. China's voice at the United Nations, he said, was "one for the developing world".
Apart from the Russian Far East and contiguous parts of Southeast Asia, the South Pacific in general and Papua New Guinea in particular is becoming one of three areas of the world where Chinese influence is spreading so rapidly that it may soon make not only an economic but also a significant demographic difference.
The South Pacific is important to Beijing for several strategic reasons. One is that Taiwan, or, as it is officially called, the Republic of China, has long endeavored to win diplomatic recognition from the impoverished island nations of the Pacific - and Beijing has driven hard to deny the island it considers a renegade province claims to international legitimacy.
Taiwan's efforts in the Pacific region have always come with generous offers of aid, something that many of the impoverished island states desperately need. As a result, the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Nauru and Palau still recognize Taiwan, not China. Beijing has more recently taken a page from Taipei's check book diplomacy by providing funding for new government buildings in Vanuatu and Samoa.
Beijing also helped pay for the construction of the venue of the 2004 South Pacific Games in Suva, Fiji. And China has invested heavily in Papua New Guinea, which is rich in natural resources but because of its volatile law and order situation has been unable to attract significant Western investments. Chinese aid to Papua New Guinea - the largest state in the Pacific - is now second only to Australia's US$300 million per year.
But there are bigger geostrategic stakes in the Pacific. While the US is focused on conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, China is making substantial human inroads into a region that has long been regarded as America’s sphere of influence. Some analysts have even suggested that the Pacific Ocean could in future become the venue for a new Cold War, where the US and China compete for client states and strategic advantage.
China is expanding its influence over the Pacific with the "long-term aim of challenging the United States as the prime power in the area", says ANU's Reilly. "It can no longer be taken for granted that Oceania will remain a relatively benign 'American lake'." Tonga is a particular case in point.
Tilting demographics
For years, Tonga was Taiwan’s staunchest ally among the Pacific’s various island states. But in 1998, Tonga suddenly shifted its recognition to Beijing. Its then king - Taufa'ahau Tupou IV, who died in September 2006 - received a red-carpet welcome in Beijing along with promises of aid. Two deputy chiefs of the People’s Liberation Army have visited Tonga in recent years. Tonga may be tiny - no more than 100,000 people live on its 700 square kilometers - but it is strategically located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Mohan Malik, a China analyst at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, said in an interview that increased Chinese tourism and migration are also part of Beijing's "economic and strategic penetration of Oceania". In recent years, thousands of Chinese have settled in the Pacific, running grocery stores, restaurants and other small businesses.
The numbers may not seem significant in a global context, but both Reilly and Malik argue that Chinese migration into these lightly populated Pacific states has upset traditional ethnic and economic patterns. For example, in the Tongan capital of Nuku'alofa there was not a single Chinese-owned grocery store 20 years ago, according to locals. Now, more than 70% of them are owned by newly-arrived Chinese migrants.
Chinese dominance of the Tongan economy was the main reason why violent riots erupted in the Tongan capital in November last year. Ostensibly demonstrating for democratic reforms, the mobs looted and burned at least 30 Chinese-owned stores before Australian and New Zealand peacekeepers arrived. The Tonga riots followed widespread rioting in the Solomon Islands, where angry mobs also attacked and ransacked Chinese-owned stores, prompting Beijing to send an airplane to evacuate more than 300 of its nationals.
In Fiji, many ethnic Indians, whose ancestors were shipped there over a century ago by the colonial British to work on sugar plantations, were recently forced to leave as ultra-nationalist Fijian politicians assumed power. But the departure of the Indians, most of whom were businessmen and shopkeepers, created a commercial vacuum that is being filled by Chinese immigrants. A stroll along Victoria Parade, the main thoroughfare in the capital, Suva, reveals as many shop signs in Chinese as in English, and considerably more than in Hindi.
Following the May 2000 coup in Fiji, China volunteered to fill the gap left by the suspension of Australian and New Zealand military assistance. According to Reilly, the realization of China's ambition to develop a blue-water navy, or a maritime force capable of operating across the deep waters of open oceans, will only increase its interest in the Pacific region. He points out that China has noted how Japan and other influential countries have historically used the Pacific islands in the service of building a Pacific empire.
Recent Chinese ministerial visits in the region have stressed "common interests" between Chinese and Pacific defense forces and Reilly believes that present military contacts with Pacific island military forces could easily be expanded in the future. Though there is no evidence yet that China seeks to expand its influence through military might, as more and more Chinese migrants settle into the region and contribute to changing the region's ethnic demographics, the Pacific is steadily becoming a Chinese sphere of influence.
PART 3: How-to guide for fleeing China
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services. This series of articles is part of a larger research project conducted with support from the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation.
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