Tuesday, August 22, 2023
China in the Pacific
I've written before about the decades-long project through which China has embedded itself economically into developing countries around the world through financing and building projects even as communities of Chinese nationals grow in those nations. It's a project that has sometimes benefited the host nations, but often those gains were illusory or short-lived. Even where successful, they have made developing nations dependent on China.
An intriguing article in the Washington Post yesterday described a similar Chinese project that involves my own area of study. In Fiji (among other nations) China has developed a training program for law enforcement that is enmeshed in an exchange of officers-- and the Chinese officers in the host nation then act on their own, particularly in pursuing Chinese dissidents.
Our nation, sadly, is trending towards isolationism, which makes it hard to develop and fund programs that reach out to these developing nations without the strong-arm tactics of China. We may quickly find ourselves behind the ball.
