Even when Australia is trying to boost its influence in the Pacific, the Chinese Communist Party still manages to score successes against our interests. It scored a pretty serious one in Solomon Islands, a linchpin in Australia’s security, this month.

The pro-Beijing forces in Solomon Islands managed to push out the most important point of resistance in the country, a politician named Daniel Suidani. The fiercely anti-China leader of Malaita province lost power in a no-confidence motion on February 7.

Illustration by Andrew Dyson.Credit:Sydney Morning Herald

Suidani, a former schoolteacher, remains popular with the people of Malaita, the most populous province of the Solomons; the police had to use tear gas to quell the street protests that broke out when he was ousted.

He complained a few days later that democratic nations offered him only moral support while China offered his opponents very concrete backing. “At the moment there is no help from anyone. We get encouragements and words – ‘stand strong’ – but without any help,” he said in an interview with Cleo Paskal of the Washington-based Foundation for the Defence of Democracies.

He had earlier spoken openly about the bribes that he said China’s representatives had offered him – and other politicians – to support Beijing’s interests.

He said he was offered cash in the equivalent of about $40,000 to support Solomon Islands’ switch of diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019. That’s in a poor country with an annual per capita income one-tenth this much. Only 12 per cent of Solomons islanders have internet access, according to the World Bank.

Manasseh Sogavare and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in October.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Suidani not only resisted the bribes, he also refused to accept any investments from China. Because “they change the system” once they arrive, he told the ABC last month.

His policy was to welcome investment from “like-minded” countries only. “They are a communist nation. We are very mindful of involving the Communist Party here.”

The upshot is that he was replaced by a pro-China figure, an ally of Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister Mannaseh Sogavare. You might recall that Sogavare was the leader who conducted what Solomon islanders call “the switch” – he broke the country’s diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in favour of Beijing in 2019. Suidani refused to respect the switch or to acknowledge Beijing.

And when the switch overheated long-simmering popular disenchantment, the nation boiled over into violent street protests in 2021. The opposition sought to remove the prime minister with a no confidence motion. He was accused of being “an agent of a foreign power”.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare (right) locks arms with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Honiara, Solomon Islands in 2022.Credit:AP

But Sogavare survived. He paid the MPs who supported him with money from a slush fund called the Constituency Development Fund. China paid $90 million into the fund in 2021, according to the Australian Parliamentary Library. Entirely legal in Solomon Islands’ system.

And you might recall that Sogavare was the prime minister who last year signed a secret security pact with Beijing, roiling the Australian federal election campaign.

This damaged the Morrison government’s credibility on foreign policy and national security. His Foreign Affairs Minister, Marise Payne, refused to break cover to visit Honiara. Her invisibility was so impressive that some in her own party joked that she was in a long-running witness protection program.

Sogavare’s pact with China also alarmed the US. The Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Coordinator, Kurt Campbell, is scheduled to open a new US embassy in Honiara on Tuesday after a 30-year hiatus.

Sogavare is also the prime minister who postponed the national election due this year. His purported reason was because of the need to pay for a major sports event – Honiara is to host the Pacific Games in November this year. The opposition calls it a “power grab”.

The opposition suspects that Sogavare will continue to postpone elections under any pretext and rely on China’s armed forces to protect him against any protests.

Now that Daniel Suidani has been forced out, what is one of the new Malaita administration’s first acts? To reverse the province’s ban on Chinese money, according to the Solomon Star newspaper.

No one can accuse Australia of failing to give aid to Solomon Islands. Under the Coalition and again under Labor, Australia was and remains the biggest donor to the country.

No one can accuse the Albanese government of absenteeism in the region. Between them, Anthony Albanese, his Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, and the Pacific Minister Pat Conroy, have been in a pattern of near-continuous visits to the region and receiving Pacific leaders in reciprocation.

No one can accuse the Albanese government of a lack of commitment to the region. Apart from the fact that the prime minister’s climate policy has rehabilitated Australia’s credibility in the region, his government has offered a raft of new programs including 3000 new visas for Pacific labour access to Australia.

Wong, who spent most of last week in the region and represented Albanese at the Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji, announced a new $620 million public health program over five years, Partnerships for a Healthy Region.

Australia has a great many development programs under way in Solomon Islands paying for clean water, education and health. It also gives direct cash support to the national budget. Japan has a big aid presence there, too, notably building roads. The US, NZ and Britain also are contributing to the country’s development.

And yet, as one diplomat put it, “China basically runs the place” through its patronage of Sogavare. And now it has sway over Malaita province to further tighten its influence.

Australia cannot walk away from this contest. The Japanese used Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea as the bases for cutting off Australia’s lifelines to the world, its northern approaches. It took the US-led Battle of Guadalcanal to begin removing Tokyo’s boot from Australia’s neck.

Beijing today appears to have similar plans for dominating Australia’s northern approaches. So neither will China walk away from the struggle. It will use every possible element of power, including ones that Australia cannot. Bribery, for instance.

We have to accept this as a permanent new contest. The case of Daniel Suidani is an object lesson in what happens when we lose.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.

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