Pacific & Asia
Asia Rising
Asian Nations Are Replacing Western Influence In The Pacific
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In late 2007, Ron Crocombe, professor emeritus at the University of the South Pacific, released Asia In The Pacific Islands: Replacing The West, a 622-page work covering the historic and emerging relations between the two regions.
Taiwan Vice President Annette Hsiu-Lien Lu being greeted by Marshall Islands Foreign Affairs Minister Tony deBrum on arrival in Majuro in January.
This is an excerpt from Crocombe’s new book: 
Whereas the last two centuries saw the proportion of Europeans in Islands’ populations rising, this century sees it declining while that of Asians rises. Likewise, among indigenous people, the proportion of East Asian genetic heritage is rising. The main increase, however, is likely to be in Asians who (like most “White Australians” and Fiji Indians) do not integrate much with host communities.
The parts of Asia that will be most significant for the Pacific Islands are Japan, coastal China, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and India. The order of importance changes over time.
The significance of Asian countries varies with purpose. Japan is irrelevant for immigration but very important for investment. The Philippines was in the 1970s-1990s the largest source of immigration to the Islands, but that is being overtaken by China. However the Philippines is becoming a center for education and health services in the Western Pacific.
Indonesia is a priority for Papua New Guinea but not for any other Islands nation, although it may play a larger role politically and in religion, supporting the growth of Islam even though Christianity is likely to remain important in the Islands for a long time.
South Korea is significant for trade and investment. North Korea hardly at all, but a combined Korea may be commercially important. India has special relevance for Fiji, but is expected to play a wider commercial, political and strategic role in the region in the coming decades.
And ethnic alliances may become more salient—the ethnic-Indian dominated government of Mauritius supported Fiji Indian interests during Fiji’s coups, and for the opposite reason Malaysia supported indigenous Fijian interests. Ethnic Chinese are expected to find more interest in common through Asia and the Pacific.
Export processing zones boomed in the 1980s and 1990s in Micronesia, Fiji and Samoa. Many employees were Asian and most factories were Asian-owned and depended on preferential access to Australia, New Zealand, U.S. and European markets as a form of aid to the Islands nation in which they operated. But with increasing pressure from the USA in particular (through WTO) they may not survive.
The Pacific Islands have two kinds of leverage in relations with countries outside the region. First are material resources like minerals, fish and forests, second are non material ones such as sovereignty, which includes votes in international forums, strategic locations for international financial transactions, ship registrations, military testing or strategic denial, exoticism (which is the basis of tourism), and so on.
If China and Taiwan became one, or became friends as two, aid to the Pacific Islands would shrink, not only from them but from their Asian and Western competitors, too. If Japan and China resolved their differences, the Pacific Islands would suffer. A powerful umbrella like APEC could marginalize the Islands into a fragment to be “cared for” (held in place with marginal provisions) by the dominant powers on the Pacific Rim. The recently formed Scientific Committee on Tuna could be a forerunner of such a ganging up by big partners with interests in the region on the small ones, in order to get resources on their own terms.
Relations between Island nations and Asian nations will multiply over the coming decades. If Asian nations remain competitive with one another and Islands nations retain realistic independence, the future contains much more positive potential. The outcome depends largely on the skill with which the relations are managed, but little is yet being done in the islands to prepare people to gain optimum benefit from the new paradigm.
Asia in the Pacific Islands: Replacing the West
IPS Publications, The University of the South Pacific, 2007.
www.ipsbooks.usp.ac.fj
