On 7 November 1918, the passenger and cargo ship Talune docked in Apia, Samoa, which was under New Zealand occupation following the outbreak of the first world war. On board were people suffering from “Spanish flu”, a highly infectious disease already responsible for the deaths of millions of people across the world. The acting port officer at Apia was unaware that the pandemic was ripping through Auckland and, as a result, he permitted passengers ashore – including six who were seriously ill with influenza. Within a week the disease had made its way throughout the main islands of Samoa. Approximately 8,500 people – more than one-fifth of the population – contracted the virus and died.
That moment of administrative incompetence is part of a series of New Zealand blunders in the Pacific. In 1929 New Zealand forces, who eventually had their occupation of Samoa legitimised in the League of Nations, opened fire on independence protesters, killing up to eight people. Later in the 20th century, Samoans and other Pacific Islanders living in New Zealand were targeted as part of the infamous “dawn raids” where so-called overstayers had their homes invaded before being deported. In 1982 the privy council ruled that all Western Samoans born between 1924 and 1948 were British subjects, and that in 1949 they and their descendants had become New Zealand citizens. In the wake of the ruling the New Zealand parliament legislated to strip citizenship from those Samoans.
And so with this history in mind it’s difficult to understand why New Zealand policymakers think that their relationship with countries of the Pacific is somehow closer, friendly, or more historically justified than those countries’ relationships with China. In March a draft security agreement between Solomon Islands and China was leaked revealing that Chinese police would enter the country to train the local police force. In April another agreement was confirmed, this time a maritime cooperation agreement that is sparking fears of a possible Chinese naval base in the Solomons. The Solomons’ prime minister claimed that, in response to the deal, an unnamed country had threatened to “invade”.
That seems rather unlikely, but the deal is certainly causing recurring rounds of hand wringing in the foreign affairs departments of New Zealand and Australia. Under former foreign affairs minister Winston Peters, New Zealand undertook a “Pacific reset” in 2018 shifting resources and attention to its neighbours. But it was a case of too little, too late. China has been quietly investing in Pacific infrastructure, through grants and low-interest loans, for more than two decades. Chinese grants and investments paid for the new hospital in Apia, for example. Chinese private finance is also helping fund seaport and airport developments across the region as well. In comparison, the United States is missing in action, leading to a diminution in its influence. Australia and New Zealand, still the largest donors in the region, might find their influence diminishing as Chinese investment increases as well. Perhaps the outlier is France, pouring billions into New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, and a number of other countries.
The reason France is active, though, is because it’s a continuing colonial power. It still maintains military bases. The United States is also a colonial power in the region maintaining its own military bases. Their list of holdings include American Samoa, Guam, and Hawaii. New Zealand and Australia are, of course, former colonial powers. China isn’t. Until New Zealand grapples with this history – its often incompetent administration of Pacific countries, and its often racist treatment of Pacific people domestically – then the country’s policymakers will struggle to match China’s influence in the region. Because that is what China is selling. Yes, it’s funding infrastructure, but it’s also offering – sometimes subtly, sometimes not – an escape from the patronising development politics of western governments. As the quote, attributed to an apocryphal Kenyan official goes, “every time China visits we get a hospital, every time Britain visits we get a lecture”.
Since Cook’s first voyage to the “Great South Land”, the Pacific has been a staging ground for imperial competition. Britain, France, Germany, and the United States carved the blue continent up among themselves in the 1800s. America’s Manifest Destiny made its way as far west as Hawaii, France and Germany took a number of islands, and Britain won the major prizes – Australia and New Zealand. In the 20th century, China and Taiwan have staged their own diplomatic competition. Today, most Pacific states recognise China, with some countries like Samoa having recognised the People’s Republic of China continuously since 1976. That brings its own shades of colonialism, but it’s nothing compared to the colonial administration of New Zealand or, indeed, the colonial crimes of nuclear states like France and the United States whose legacy of weapons testing continues to poison islands and their inhabitants.
So who could blame countries like Solomon Islands for playing both sides? Before New Zealand can succeed in its Pacific reset it must grapple with what its colonial history in the Pacific means. It may not necessarily mean reflexive distrust – contemporary New Zealand governments are largely credited as honest brokers – but New Zealand certainly isn’t entitled to a privileged position in Pacific diplomatic relations. It only enjoys a position out of proximity and a colonial history of overseeing Polynesia on Britain’s behalf . It’s patronising to assume New Zealand should enjoy a superior position in the Pacific. The idea that China might pursue the possibility of a military base in the Pacific is sending the western world into fits, yet it’s rare for policymakers and politicians in those same western countries to question the fact that France and the US maintain military bases in the region. When Nanaia Mahuta travels to the Pacific to pursue the reset she must do so with a national humility. Then, New Zealand might find its reset is more successful.
Morgan Godfery (Te Pahipoto, Sāmoa) is a senior lecturer at the University of Otago and a columnist at Metro
