China hosts the nations of the Pacific island in order to strengthen diplomatic and commercial links | News

Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets the best diplomats of 11 Pacific nations in the Chinese city of Xiamen.

China is organizing a high -level meeting with 11 Pacific island countries while it seeks to deepen links and build what it calls a “closer” community with “a common future” in the strategic region.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi presides over the meeting in the city of Xiamen on Wednesday.

The president of Kiribati, Taneti Maamau and the best diplomats of Niue, Tonga, Nauru, Micronesia, Salomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua Nouvelle-Guinée, Cook Islands, Fiji and Samoa participate.

The two -day meeting is the third rally of this type, but the first to perform in person in China.

Katrina Yu d’Al Jazeera, reporting from Beijing, said diplomats should discuss trade, infrastructure development, poverty, sustainability and climate change.

“For China, this is an opportunity to extend its influence and expand economic ties at a time when the United States has been showing very little interest in this region, and we know more and more than many of these countries are more aligned on China on things like investment, infrastructure, trade and even security assistance,” she said.

Global uncertainty

The meeting comes as the discounts of the President of the United States Donald Trump with foreign aid and the threat of prices fuel global uncertainty. Analysts say it left the door open to China to intervene.

“This lack of certainty makes the United States a very difficult partner with whom to work,” Tess Newton told Griffith Asia Institute. “While other partners, including China, can offer, well you know that we were here yesterday, we are here today, and we expect to be here tomorrow.”

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announcing the meeting last week, said that the objective of the meeting was to “jointly build a community of Chinese-Pacific countries even closer with a common future”.

Analysts say that for Beijing, this results in greater economic aid, diplomatic commitment and the pursuit of a regional security pact.

China has already signed a security agreement with the Salomon Islands in 2022, a year after the deployment of the police on the field in the capital, Honiara, following a series of riots.

Beijing also sent advisers to Vanuatu and Kiribati and wishes to enclose a similar pact with other island nations.

“What China is trying to do … is to insert as a security player and, in certain cases, by the angle of contribution to the individual security needs of the Pacific countries such as the police,” said Mihai Sora, director of the Pacific Islands program at the Lowy Institute in Australia.

The meeting in Xiamen is “an opportunity for China” to push its objectives “in its own space, on its own lawn and on its own conditions,” he added.

Taiwan

The subject of Taiwan, the island self-strict that China claims to be his and is off the coast of Xiamen, should also be discussed at this meeting.

China has gradually revolted in the number of Pacific countries which retain links with Taiwan, and in January of last year, Nauru also changed recognition in Beijing.

Taiwan now has three remaining allies in the region – The Marshall Islands, the Palau and Tuvalu.

The Yu d’Al Jazeera said that the region was of strategic, military and diplomatic importance for China.

“If you look at the region, these countries are very small, their savings are small and only one of them has a population that exceeds one million. It is Papua-Nouvelle-Guinea,” she said.

“But the region is strategically extremely important for Beijing, because it houses crucial shipping routes, deep sea cables, deep sea ports and potential mineral deposits underwater. Micular, it could be strategically important, because if there could be a conflict in the future, this region could be very close in terms of the launch of potentials attacked on American territory, and also Ally of Australia is very close. “