The Pacific's top regional body has denied that it buckled to pressure from China by deleting a line referring to Taiwan in a communique issued by regional leaders late last week, suggesting that an administrative error was to blame instead.
Solomon Islands has been pressing other Pacific nations to strip Taiwan of its status as a "development partner" for the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), which gives it limited access to some parts of the annual gathering.
But the final communique issued by PIF leaders on Friday afternoon after their meeting in Tonga briefly reaffirmed a 1992 agreement allowing Taiwan to play a role in forum leaders' meetings.
That drew a furious response from China's ambassador to the Pacific, Qian Bo, who remonstrated with the PIF secretariat and Pacific leaders in the wake of the leaders meeting final press conference.
The ambassador also told media at the event there had been a "mistake" and said he had demanded PIF make a "correction".
Video posted to social media by RNZ reporter Lydia Lewis at the weekend shows the ambassador shaking hands with Cook Islands prime minister and former PIF chair Mark Brown, who then tells Qian Bo "we'll remove it" — a clear reference to the Taiwan section in the communique.
Later that night, the communique was taken down. And when it went back up on PIF's website the next day, the reference to Taiwan had disappeared.
Several analysts accused the Pacific Islands of folding under pressure from China, suggesting it set a worrying precedent for the organisation.
But a spokesperson for the forum secretariat suggested there had simply been an administrative error, saying PIF "re-issued the correct version of the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Communique".
"The version as finalised does not change nor impact the decisions of the meeting, nor any standing decisions of the forum leaders," the spokesperson said in an email response.
"The communique is a consensus based document, reflecting the agreed decisions and views of all the Pacific Islands Forum."
Three separate sources aware of the situation have told the ABC that while PIF was keenly conscious of China's furious response, the secretariat took down the communique because it was not the final version of the document which leaders had agreed on.
The ABC has been told that while leaders did broadly agree to maintain the status quo on Taiwan — at least for now — they did not actually endorse the version of the communique that explicitly references Taiwan and reaffirms the existing arrangements.
"This was maybe the worst-possible stuff-up, but it was just a stuff-up," one official from a PIF member nation said.
"PIF would never have taken down the document if the leaders had agreed to it. It just doesn't have the power to do that.
"It was just deeply unfortunate that it was this line [on Taiwan] which … actually shouldn't have been there."
China 'has not done enough' on Pacific policing
Taiwan's Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Tien Chung-Kwang, told the ABC that Taiwan was a "force for good" in the Pacific and he hoped it would be able to continue to play a role at PIF meetings.
"We understand that some Pacific Island nations may face significant pressure from the certain country," he said.
"We hope that all island nations will view Taiwan's contributions to the region's welfare with rationality. We are stronger when we are together.
"We work with our Pacific allies on projects that benefit the people, such as in agriculture, fisheries, food security, maritime conservation, and climate change mitigation."
The controversy comes as Pacific countries continue to face intensifying strategic competition in the region.
Australia, the United States and New Zealand have all signalled they are uneasy about China's police-training initiatives in the Pacific, particularly in Solomon Islands, which has struck contentious security policing and security pacts with Beijing.
Australia's Pacific Minister, Pat Conroy, has said that China should have no role in Pacific policing and Australian police have warned that China's authoritarian policing methods are a poor fit for Pacific democracies, while New Zealand's Foreign Minister Winston Peter has warned that Beijing is searching for a "beach-head" in the region.
But Qian Bo forcefully rejected those criticisms while speaking with journalists at the end of the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting, telling the ABC that his country's police assistance programs in the Pacific were only in their "initial" stages, declaring that Beijing had "not done enough" to bolster law enforcement in the region.
"Our policing cooperation with those countries is simply based on their need and, frankly speaking, [is] at a very initial stage," he said.
"So if there's a need for equipment, then we'll provide some equipment. If there's a need for training, then we'll help them to do some training."
The ambassador also hinted that Beijing might expand its programs in the future, although he gave no firm commitments.
"Even a much smaller country in the world will do even more [on policing] than China," he said.
"So don't talk [to] me about whether China is doing the right thing or not. We are absolutely doing the right thing. We have not done enough!"
China struck its security and policing agreements with Solomon Islands and sent police trainers to the country in the wake of the November 2021 riots that devastated parts of the capital Honiara, including much of Chinatown, and left three people dead.
Australia rapidly sent both police and defence personnel to Honiara when the unrest broke out, quickly restoring order.
But the ambassador suggested China offered policing help because Solomon Islands officials admitted during those riots that local police were incapable of protecting Chinese citizens or the Chinese embassy.
"In Solomon Islands many Chinese were attacked and even died. So we need to have a right as a sovereign state. If you take Chinese [into] your city, you need to protect your citizens," he told journalists.
"When you talk to them, people say, 'No, we don't have capacity even to control the situation, let alone [protect] the Chinese, or even the Chinese embassy.'"
No need to worry about China in Pacific, ambassador says
He also brushed off Australia's anxieties about China's strategic ambitions in the Pacific, predicting they would ease if the bilateral relationship between the two countries continued to improve.
"As long as we move in that direction … you will be at ease," he said.
"You don't have to worry about China.
"The real worry is whether this country and this region is not developing very fast, or [is] still quite lagging behind. This is the real worry."
The ambassador said China was most sharply focused on bolstering investment, trade and development in the Pacific in the face of sluggish economic growth after the COVID-19 shutdowns.
"You must focus on trade, you must focus on investment … our objective is obvious. Not to provide fish, but teach our friends how to fish," he told journalists.
"No country is able to develop if they don't have investment from the outside."
China lent heavily to some Pacific nations in the 2000s and 2010s and some still have large debts to Chinese institutions, including a $US119 million ($176 million) loan from EXIM Bank which has been sitting on the Tongan government's books for well over a decade.
But in recent years Beijing has pulled back both loans and aid to the Pacific, while Australia and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have emerged as larger lenders.
Qian Bo said whenever Pacific leaders visited China, government officials would take them to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which he said was becoming a "more and more important financial institution".
"They can provide soft loans to countries to help them develop. The AIIB president, he told me … that whenever there is a project they want to invest in, they want to make sure it's 100 per cent successful. I think this is a very correct approach."
He also confirmed that the United States and China had committed to deepening cooperation on climate change in the Pacific during the PIF partners dialogue earlier in the week.
Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape heaped praise on both great powers in the wake of the meeting, saying they could open a new chapter on cooperation in the Pacific.
The Chinese ambassador took a more circumspect tone, saying China had "always" been open to cooperation with the US and suggesting that it was the Biden administration that proposed a new focus on working together.
"I don't know why [US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell] approached me by saying this. We have told the Americans repeatedly over the years that we're willing to work with them," he said.
But he also said it was critical for the major powers and other countries to intensify their efforts to address climate change and to hasten the energy transition.
"We think the Pacific is big enough for China and the US, Japan, some other countries, so we can work together," he said.
"If we can work together, the region will be more peaceful [and] more prosperous and there will be much more development.
"We have an open mind."
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