We Say 3

Media visit to China...Pacific Islands News Association executives Lance Polu (left) and Francis Herman with China's Zhou Wenzhog. Photo: PINA.

Oh, the games that people play. One game very evident in the region is the game played by the People's Republic of China, a country with one of the world's worst human rights records, as it bribes and bullies Pacific Islands governments to break their links with the democratic Republic of China, better known as Taiwan, or at least reduce them to the thinnest possible thread.

In recent weeks, China has added the scalps of Nauru and the Cook Islands to its string of trophies. It simply bought broke Nauru with a small loan and offered promises of future goodies to the Cook Islands.

Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tonga are notable kowtowers in China's direction, all for the sake of a few dollars. Samoa has just prized an aquatic centre from China, an asset without which it would have difficulty hosting the 2007 South Pacific Games. Where would Fiji had been with this year's South Pacific Games if China hadn't put up a big sports centre with the help of a cheap loan and mostly Chinese materials and labour, thus reducing the value of local input to a minimum.

Something extraordinary has happened in Kiribati. Last month, after the country's new government announced that it had established full relations with Taiwan, the Chinese embassy at Tarawa and the foreign office in Beijing became hysterical.

In Beijing, a foreign office official ordered Kiribati to ³immediately correct² its wrong decision. At Tarawa, the resident Chinese ambassador warned that his country would end relations unless Kiribati immediately reverted to its previous stance of recognising China only. He accused Taiwan of ³buying international recognition.²

That's rich, considering how much China spends on buying Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and a lot of other places.

But in Kiribati, China is in a bind. Tarawa is the location of one of three Chinese rockets and space vehicle tracking stations. It doesn't want to lose the Tarawa location so it must kowtow to Kiribati and ignore invitations to the Taiwan embassy's cocktail parties. However, as Islands Business went to press China had begun dismantling its space station.

More seriously, during the recent Kiribati elections there were constant allegations of large amounts of foreign money made available to finance campaigning by the pro-China incumbent government's supporters in their constituencies.

One authoritative source tells of the movement into the country of A$2 million .

Imagine the squeals around the region if Australian or New Zealand money was found to be financing certain preferred election campaigners in Fiji, Papua New Guinea or Samoa.

Pacific Islands governments are by no means alone in kowtowing Beijing's way. Australia does it, even to the extent of blocking freedom of expression and speech, as it did to save the Chinese leader from being rudely embarrassed by critics when he visited Australia a few weeks ago.

The Americans, British and French kowtow when it suits their purpose. China is such a huge market for their goods, too enormous to ignore.

Historically, Taiwan was a Chinese colony lost to control by the mainland in the 19th century.

Now, Taiwan wishes to keep its independence and democracy, not surrender it meekly to China's brand of dictatorship.

What's wrong with China? The trouble is not with over 1000 million Chinese. It's with their government. What's wrong with that? Ask Tibet. Ask other Chinese invaded and ruled segments of Asia. Ask India about what it regards as bits of Chinese occupied India it lost a war over. Ask certain claimants of reef patches in the China Sea. Ask the millions of persecuted practitioners of Falun Gong, a health and philosophy movement. Ask the relatives of all those slaughtered in Tianamen Square. China is coming right, slowly, slowly. For many more years yet, all that is wrong about China should be taken heed by Pacific Islanders who play games with it.