Timor-Leste President José Ramos-Horta has urged fellow world leaders not to view China as a “threat”, arguing small nations like his own are the ones to suffer most from the effects of international tension and war.
Ramos-Horta, who is set to address the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday afternoon, gave a speech to a crowd of about 1,000 at an event arranged by the Australia Institute at the Sydney Opera House on Tuesday night.
At the Opera House event, which Crikey attended, Ramos-Horta said he wished to correct what he described as “the claim by some Australian media that [Timor-Leste] has debt with China”.
“This is my clarification: we don’t. We don’t view China as enemies, we don’t view China as a threat to Australia, a threat to the region, a threat to the world,” the Nobel Peace Prize laureate said.
Ramos-Horta praised Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for “resetting relations and engaging in dialogue with China”, and said he had extended the same congratulations to French President Emmanuel Macron in January.
“I’m pleased that the foreign secretary of the UK, the current one, said he was ready to travel to China. Because we small countries in the periphery, we have nothing to do with all these major global power tensions,” Ramos-Horta said.
“But when a war happens, we in the periphery, we suffer. Not directly from the war, but as a consequence of war.”
Ramos-Horta said that as an example, the prices of rice and cooking oil in Timor-Leste had nearly doubled as a consequence of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“So we know the cost of war, and so we appeal to the big powers: engage in diplomacy, engage in dialogue, persistent dialogue, patient dialogue, so that one day we can see the United States, China, Australia, and all the other powers, Indonesia, India, all working together to address issues of poverty around the world.”
Ramos-Horta said that “most of [Timor-Leste’s] debt was not with China”.
“Most of the debt, actually up to 70% to 80%, is to the World Bank, the [International Monetary Fund], and the [Asian Development Bank]”.
“But these are not the worst — the [worst] is the commercial banks that charge 7%, 8% interest,” he said.
Ramos-Horta urged the world’s major economies to combat poverty by “adopting a new Marshall Plan, focused on education, on health, on reforestation, on clean energy”, referencing the US program to finance the financial recovery and the rebuilding of European infrastructure after World War II.
While it was unclear which exact Australian media reports Ramos-Horta was referring to, there have been several instances in the past decade where Australian analysts have warned China’s Belt and Road Initiative could ensnare Timor-Leste in debt and extend Beijing’s influence on Australia’s doorstep.
In 2019, Timor-Leste denied a report in The Australian claiming “the state-owned Timor Gap gas company has rejected finance derived from US pension funds and is now ready to sign a commercial loan with China’s Exim Bank”.
In 2022, after Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited Timor-Leste’s capital Dili, she warned Ramos-Horta not to risk “unsustainable debt burdens” in developing its gas resource sector with potential Chinese financial assistance.
Ahead of that visit, Wong’s rhetoric was criticised in Chinese state media, with the Global Times reporting: “Australia and the US-led Western world want to sow discord between China and the island nations with the groundless and malicious ‘China debt trap’ narrative and ‘China threat theory’, as they try to drive nations into the US-led anti-China camp under the so-called Indo-Pacific Strategy.”
