In what was an unusual coincidence, while the visiting Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand Winston Peters expressed his unhappiness to his Chinese hosts that Beijing did not inform his country before concluding a series of security and economic agreements with the Cook Islands, the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown was fighting a vote of no confidence over deals he struck with China.
The Cook Islands is a self-governing state that has a constitutional relationship with New Zealand.
Peters concluded his three-day visit to China on February 27, and Brown survived the no-confidence motion on February 26.
This unusual coincidence has not received the due attention, as it seems to have been overshadowed by China’s “unprecedented” live-fire naval drills in waters (Tasman Sea) between Australia and New Zealand on February 22 and 23, which have raised significant security concerns in the Indo-Pacific region as a whole.
In these drills, a three-ship flotilla — comprising an oiler, a Jiangkai-class frigate, and the Renhai-class Zunyi, the PLA Navy’s most capable cruiser — launched missiles just outside Australia’s exclusive economic zone, forcing commercial flights to reroute. Experts say these exercises constituted an unprecedented show of force, demonstrating Beijing’s increased willingness and capacity to project power beyond its maritime periphery.
Incidentally, both Australia and New Zealand have expressed serious concerns over China’s actions. Describing the drills as “unprecedented,” New Zealand’s Defense Minister Judith Collins said on February 24 that Wellington had never seen a task force of this capability doing that kind of work. “The weapons they have are extremely capable. One has 112 vertical launch cells and has a reported anti-ship ballistic missile range of 540 nautical miles,” she said.
On February 22, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that even though the Chinese drills complied with international law, Beijing “could have given more notice.”
Typically, 12 to 24 hours’ notice is given for such drills, but Beijing reportedly only provided Australia and New Zealand with a couple of hours’ notice.
According to “The Law of the Sea,” a United Nations convention, an ocean is divided into the high seas, the territorial sea, which is 12 nautical miles, and the exclusive economic zone, which is 200 nautical miles.
If vessels are in the high seas, they have considerable freedom to transit and operate as they see fit, provided that they’re under a flag, which these Chinese vessels were. If they were in the territorial sea, which was not the case with China, then they would not have been able to conduct the war games that they did.
However, Peters told the reporters that he did raise Wellington’s concerns directly with his counterpart Wang Yi about the short notice and expected that these would be considered. However, his main grudge was the lack of communication about the so-called strategic comprehensive partnership agreement that China concluded with the Cook Islands.
“We also discussed our strong relationships with Pacific countries, including New Zealand’s special constitutional relationships with its realm partners, in particular the Cook Islands,” Peters said in a statement.
It may be noted that though the Cook Islands is a self-governing nation, it maintains free association with Wellington, sharing King Charles as its head of state and citizenship rights. Cook Islanders are New Zealand “citizens,” in the sense that they use New Zealand passports and the New Zealand dollar.
While about 100,000 Cook Islanders live in New Zealand, only around 15,000 live in the Cook Islands (comprising 15 islands). According to the non-binding 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration, the Cook Islands is supposed to “work together and consult” with New Zealand on defense and national security matters of mutual interest.
However, the Cook Islands, like other islands in the Southern Pacific, are being wooed by China so much that they are gradually distancing themselves from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
These three countries have traditionally been their principal benefactors. China has increased its presence in the region, which could undermine regional confidence in the United States and threaten sea lines critical for Australia’s and New Zealand’s security.
In the South Pacific, the U.S. has territories like the Northern Mariana Islands and military allies like Australia and New Zealand.
China’s increasing presence, particularly since President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, has been very subtle. It has been through the signing of “security and development agreements” with regional countries through economic cooperation, elite capture, and policing assistance. These countries include the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Samoa, and now the Cook Islands.
Western analysts fear that these agreements have politically undermined Taiwan, long seen by China as a key regional partner in the region, and that they now could provide People’s Liberation Army (PLA) access to staging areas far closer to Hawaii and other sensitive U.S. military locations.
In 2017, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) linked China to the South Pacific with the “blue economic passage,” a proposed maritime route, primarily focused on the South China Sea but with plans to facilitate economic cooperation and development between China and other countries along the route, connecting Asia with Africa, Oceania, and Europe.
Three main passages here are China-Indian Ocean-Africa-Mediterranean Sea, China-Oceania-South Pacific, and a route connecting to Europe via the Arctic.
The key rationale here is to utilize ocean resources sustainably for economic growth through trade, infrastructure development, and joint ventures across the maritime passage.
In 2018, Xi was said to have shaped the geopolitical environment of the South Pacific when he visited the region and secured the membership of all eligible Pacific Islands in his new BRI, influencing Solomon Islands and Kiribati to switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 2019.
These were said to be the opening moves of China’s quest for strategic space in the Pacific. This intent was further clarified by the signing of a security agreement with Solomon Islands, followed by the proposal of a “common development vision” before Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s tour of the Pacific Islands in mid-2022.
According to Australian military analyst Peter Connolloy, it was with a clear vision that China appointed defense attaches for the first time in 2020 to all its diplomatic missions in the South Pacific for continuous engagement with host-nation security forces, officials, and politicians. The objective was to secure geostrategic access and dual-use facilities, enabling force projection and influence by China’s PLA.
A dual-use facility is a port or airfield established by a Chinese company that is capable of sustaining and projecting a military contingent for low-intensity operations during the current phase of competition. It could become a military base in the future, but in its initial state, it is a commercial facility.
The clearest example of China achieving geostrategic access in the Pacific is Solomon Islands, argues Connolloy, explaining how the Chinese embassy deftly manipulated the opportunity created by the November 2021 riots in Honiara. The Security Framework Agreement in 2022 opened strategic space for China by enabling the utility of dual-use facilities.
Against this background, Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, views the Cook Islands signing a Memorandum of Association (MOA) with China and the military drills in the Tasman Sea for the first time as “strategic signalling” by China, particularly to Australia.
It is to be noted that the Chinese drills came on the heels of Beijing’s “very aggressive actions” in the South China Sea. On February 11, a Chinese PLA J-16 fighter jet released flares within 30 metres of a Royal Australian Air Force P-8A Poseidon, which was conducting a routine surveillance patrol in international waters in the disputed waterway.
Davis argued that China now has shown its willingness and capability “to project naval capabilities against Australia at a time of its choosing” at an area adjacent to Australia.
Davis’ fellow Australian analysts Troy Lee-Brown and Geoffrey Miller also share the view that if Australia can send its Navy into the South China Sea to join its allies like Japan, the Philippines, and the United States, China could always return the favour.
Viewed thus, there are merits in the argument that the agreement with Cook Islands and military drills in the Tasman Sea need to be seen together as they are components of the same China strategy for a larger presence in the South Pacific.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times and has been commenting on politics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
- CONTACT: prakash.nanda (at) hotmail.com
