President Emmanuel Macron will visit the French overseas territory New Caledonia in the Pacific from 24 July to 29 July. The agenda includes discussions on the archipelago's future status, the effects of China's growing influence in the region, and environmental issues such as climate change and coastal erosion.
Macron last visited New Caledonia in 2018, before a series of three referendums on self-determination. The "No" vote won, but voices favouring a separation from Paris are growing stronger. During the first referendum in 2018, independence was rejected by 56.7 percent, but in 2020 only by 53.3 percent.
The third and last referendum, in 2021, overwhelmingly favoured staying with France (95.5 percent) but only because the pro-independence opposition controlled by the indigenous Kanak population, boycotted the vote.
During his re-election campaign, Macron promised to defuse existing tensions with separatists, though negotiations on the electorate for the 2024 provincial elections remain uncertain today.
Focus on the Pacific
Paris may engage in dialogue on the future status of its overseas territory, but New Caledonia represents a growing strategic interest for Paris.
Following the US, which shifted the focus of its foreign policy to the Pacific under the Obama administration, France followed with its own Indo-Pacific strategy in 2019.
The main goal: to counter China's growing influence in the region.
A new 130m docking quay was built at Noumea Port last August, able to host 2 patrol ships. France also takes part in war games with Australia, using the archipelago as a base, and French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle is expected to visit in 2025.
But the China card is played by both sides.
According to researcher Daryl Morini, in a brief for the Australian National University, anti-independence forces argue that independence from France "will inevitably result in New Caledonia being strategically dominated by China".
France itself repeatedly warns against "hegemonism" in the region, with Macron pointing out in a 2021 speech in Papeete, capital of French Polynesia, that "the small needed a big power" to protect them from the "incursions of the hegemon which comes to take their fish, their technology and their economic resources" - without mentioning China by name.
But according to the 650-page report by France's defence ministry, China exerts influence in the independence movement in New Caledonia.
Its claims are not substantiated, but Morini points out that the report "played into the 2021 independence campaign by shoring up pro-France arguments."
A proponent of the China-threat theory in the Pacific, Bastien Vandendyck, was recently appointed as communications advisor to France's ministry of the interior.
But according to Morini, the Kanak pro-independence opposition counters the claim that independence would "entail New Caledonia’s subjugation to foreign powers as a colonial trope that "the Kanak are incapable of governing themselves".
The indigenous Kanak, concentrated in the Northern part of the archipelago, are currently trying to secure control over New Caledonia's lucrative nickel mining without being dominated by either France or China.
On July 26, Macron will meet with the various New Caledonian political groups. After his visit to the territory, he will travel on to Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, a first visit by a French president outside French territories in the Pacific.
