OF EMINENT WESTERN DIPLOMATS AND A CHINESE NAVY HOSPITAL SHIP

Interestingly and to much amusement, the US is busy recruiting non-Pacific powers like NATO into the IndoPacific, and there’s hardly any encouragement of the Pacific Islands into the Indo-Pacific.

- DAVE MOTULALO

The past week has been interesting in the Kingdom of Tonga as it endures the geopolitical flurry between the ascending optimistic powers from the East and the setting sun of the empires of the West.

Last Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made his first visit to the island kingdom, just east of Fiji and due north of New Zealand. Blinken is the first Biden Cabinet member to visit the country, and his visit is also seen as a response to PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit earlier in the year. Blinken didn’t waste too much time battering his competition.

“As China’s engagement in the region has grown, there has been some—from our perspective—increasingly problematic behaviour,” Al Jazeera reported parts of what Blinken told his hosts in Tonga.

He claimed that China had been behind “some predatory economic activities and also investments that are done in a way that can actually undermine good governance and promote corruption.”

“We’re (US) a Pacific nation,” Blinken told his hosts. “We very much see the future in the Indo-Pacific region.”

“We really understand what is a priority for the people here.”
As Secretary Blinken departed, another western diplomat, David McAllister, Member of the European Parliament and Chair of the European Parliament’s Foreign Policy Committee, touched down in Tonga.