China is hosting a meeting for the foreign ministers of 11 Pacific Island nations in the southeastern city of Xiamen. Cleo Paskal, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told TaiwanPlus News that China is expanding its influence in the Pacific with infrastructure projects.
00:00So Cleo, why is China hosting the Pacific Islands Foreign Minister's Meeting?
00:04What is its goal for a meeting like this?
00:07So it's an annual forum and their goal is to expand and normalize these sorts of meetings.
00:16I think they're probably using it to test out countries, individuals, systems to see who they can work with,
00:22which gives them keys into who they can help build up relationships with and who, if they were difficult to deal with,
00:30they would use on-the-ground, united front-type work to try to make their careers much more difficult.
00:35So it achieves several goals all at the same time, including the statement that you've seen come out,
00:43which, for example, reinforces China's position on Taiwan, including ultimate, as they put it, reunification.
00:53So that means that those foreign ministers and, in one case, prime minister, have signed on to that level of support.
01:04Are these countries receptive to China's messaging?
01:08Yes, they are.
01:09And, I mean, I'm currently in, on the island of Woolley Eye, in the state of Yap, in the country of the Federated States of Micronesia.
01:20This is a compact of free association country.
01:24But this island, for example, has had an unusable runway.
01:28The runway was built during the Imperial Japanese era, during the war.
01:33And it's fallen into disuse.
01:37That means that it's very difficult to do medevacs from here.
01:40It's difficult to connect to the outside world.
01:43And it's a Chinese company that broke ground just two or three days ago on the rebuilding of that runway.
01:51Many of these countries are former allies of Taiwan.
01:54How can Taipei counter Beijing's influence in the Pacific Island region?
01:58So Taiwanese, I think, assessors need to take a look at the region, but you can't learn it from books or from the Internet.
02:09This island just got connected to the Internet, or actually this one person through Starlink, which is how I'm talking to you.
02:16You need to make the effort to go out, to meet the people, to talk to them, to see what their needs are, and to give them an option that isn't China.
