The Pacific Islands in China's Grand Strategy: Small States, Big Games.

• Author: Powles, Michael
• Position: Book review

THE PACIFIC ISLANDS IN CHINA'S GRAND STRATEGY: Small States, Big Games

Author: Jian Yang

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2012, 254pp, US$85.

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Does China pose a threat to Pacific Islands countries? Or to Western interests in the Pacific Islands region? Some observers, mostly from countries outside the region, are emphatic that it does. They warn that Chinas growing influence poses a threat to the established, Western-friendly, order in the region, a threat also therefore to Australian and New Zealand interests and, in a somewhat patronising stretch, a threat also to Pacific Islands countries themselves.

To date the main consequence for Australia and New Zealand of Chinas rise has been economic--and very beneficial. The sale to China of minerals from Australia and primary produce from New Zealand has helped these two economies avoid serious economic damage in the present global downturn. Undoubtedly the economic links between Australia and New Zealand, on the one hand, and the Pacific Islands countries of the Pacific, on the other, together with islands countries' growing economic links of their own with China, have resulted in Chinas economic rise benefiting the islands countries, both directly and indirectly.

But proponents of the China threat thesis foresee an increasingly powerful China gradually seeking to challenge United States security predominance in the Pacific Ocean. They point to increasing military expenditure by China, Chinese assertiveness in East Asia and negative Chinese reactions to the role of the US Navy on the high seas off her shores. Others argue that China is simply projecting increasing power externally commensurate with its burgeoning economy. They describe Chinese military expenditure as still being tiny compared to that of the United States. They argue, moreover, that Chinas leaders would be foolish to upset the international stability on which their country has depended for its economic growth; doing so could even imperil stability within China.

Undoubtedly accommodation and compromise will be necessary if confrontations are to be avoided in the Asia--Pacific region. Hugh White of the Australian National University (ANU) predicted some time ago that greater danger to security would come from United States reactions to Chinas rise than from Chinas rise itself. Since then, intensified US security collaboration with other countries of the region will have reinforced...