Framing China in the Pacific Islands

ABSTRACT

How did many Australians come to accept that competition, rather than cooperation, with China was necessary in the Pacific Islands? We use discourse analysis techniques to examine the role that framings in Australian official discourse, media, and commentary over the last decade (2011–2021) played in constructing China’s presence in the region as threatening such that many Australians have accepted that policies aimed at competing with China are the most reasonable foreign and strategic policy response. We find that Australian official discourse was characterised by qualified optimism about China’s role until 2018, when a more explicit emphasis on competition emerged. Echoing this shift, while the media and (much of) the commentary framed China’s role in terms of threat and competition throughout the decade, this framing increased significantly in 2018. It is impossible to isolate the Australian government’s policy approach to China in the Pacific Islands from its broader understanding of China’s increasingly activist role in Australia, the Indo-Pacific, and globally. But our findings suggest that, by consistently framing China in terms of threat and competition, the media and – to a lesser extent, commentary – created an enabling environment for the public to accept changes to the Australian government’s policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• China
• Pacific Islands
• discourse analysis
• foreign policy

Introduction

In 2014 then Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (2014a) urged Australia to cooperate with China in the Pacific Islands, commenting that: ‘We should be engaging China for not only is it a growing presence in our region, but we should be doing what we can to capitalise on our respective strengths, using our combined weight to bear overcoming [sic] some of the development challenges of the Pacific’. Reflecting this cooperative approach, in 2015 Australia agreed to a Trilateral Malaria Project with China and Papua New Guinea (PNG). Yet only three years later, in April 2018, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull expressed alarm about rumours that China was establishing a military base in Vanuatu, declaring that: ‘We would view with great concern the establishment of any foreign military bases in those Pacific Island countries and neighbours of ours’ (quoted in Pacific Beat 2018a). A few months later, Bishop stated that Australia’s approach to China’s investment in the Pacific Islands would be both ‘complementary in the sense that we recognise that there’s a need for infrastructure investment in the Pacific and we’re encouraging it, competitive in the sense that we want people to have options’ (quoted in Wroe 2018e). In November 2018, Australia announced a substantial policy ‘step-up’ to improve its relationships and increase its investments in the region (Morrison 2018a), a move widely interpreted as an attempt to compete with China for influence in the region.

How did many Australians come to accept the government’s policy switch towards competition, rather than cooperation, with China in the Pacific Islands? In this article, we use discourse analysis techniques to examine the role that framings in Australian official discourse, media, and commentary over the last decade (2011–2021) played in constructing China’s presence in the Pacific Islands as threatening such that many Australians accepted that competition was the most reasonable foreign and strategic policy response.

After first outlining our analytical framework, we provide background on China’s evolving presence in the Pacific Islands and Australia’s regional policies between 2011–2021. We then review the academic literature to justify our identification of three dominant ‘frames’ that have been used to characterise China’s presence in the Pacific Islands – opportunity, neutral, and threat – and analyse our data against these frames. We conclude that Australian official discourse was characterised by qualified optimism about China’s role in the region until 2018, when a more explicit emphasis on competition emerged. In contrast, the media and (much of) the commentary framed China’s role in the Pacific Islands in terms of threat and competition throughout the decade, although this increased significantly in 2018 in line with changes in the official discourse and developments in the region. It is impossible to isolate the Australian government’s policy approach to China in the Pacific Islands from its broader understanding of China’s increasingly activist role in Australia, the Indo-Pacific, and globally. But our findings suggest that, by consistently framing China in terms of threat and competition, the media and – to a lesser extent, commentary – helped to socially construct China as a potential threat and competitor in the Pacific and created an enabling environment for the public to accept changes to the Australian government’s policies.

Analytical framework

We have been guided by Roxanne Doty’s (1993, 298) concept of ‘how-possible’ questions that ‘examine how meanings are produced and attached to various social subjects/objects, thus constituting particular interpretive dispositions which create possibilities and preclude others’. Like Doty, we used discourse analysis techniques to analyse how knowledge is produced and reproduced through discourse, ‘the representational practices through which meanings are generated’ (Dunn and Neumann 2016, 2). What distinguishes a discourse analysis approach from one focused primarily on presupposed subjects (such as states) and material facts (such as the relative size of aid budgets, military deployments, or diplomatic engagements) is that it holds that discourse has the power to constitute subjects and the meaning of material facts. Discourse uses concepts, metaphors, analogies, and frames to construct ‘particular subject identities, positioning these subjects vis-à-vis one another and thereby construct … a particular “reality” in which this policy becomes possible, as well as a larger “reality” in which future policies would be justified in advance’ (Doty 1993, 304–305). Therefore, discourse analysis can reveal how Australian leaders, policymakers, and commentators understood China’s role in the Pacific Islands and how this created an enabling environment for the Australian public to accept government’s foreign and strategic policies. Indeed, the media and commentary can play ‘a key role in explaining and engaging with international affairs in a way that makes sense of foreign policy for citizens and localises international politics’ (Davis and Brookes 2016, 54; Robinson 2001).

Our analysis focused on the dominant frames used to depict China’s presence in the Pacific Islands in Australian official discourse, media, and commentary. The process of framing involves ‘select[ing] some aspects of a perceived reality and mak[ing] them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described’ (Entman 1993, 52). Framing is important because human minds filter inputs to help identify concepts worth processing and to organise their thinking about complex issues; common filters include stereotypes, biases, and heuristics (Hudson and Day 2019). Yet these frames typically exist in the background, without us noticing how they influence our thinking. This highlights the mechanism of presupposition, by which discourses create ‘background knowledge and in doing so construct … a particular kind of world in which certain things are recognised as true’ (Doty 1993, 306). Discourse also attaches labels to subjects so certain qualities are linked to ‘particular subjects through the use of predicates and the adverbs and adjectives that modify them’ (Doty 1993, 306). The quality, attribute, or property of a subject is ‘important for constructing identities for those subjects and for telling us what subjects can do’ (Doty 1993, 306).

Noting the concept of intertextuality, that is, that ‘texts always refer back to other texts which themselves refer to still other texts’ (Doty 1993, 302), we analysed representations of China’s presence in the Pacific Islands in Australian public discourse over the last decade (2011–2021). We limited our analysis to the last ten years for pragmatic reasons, given the quantum of potential data, and because we anticipated there would be an increase in both coverage and threat framing in 2018, given that was when reports of attempts by China to establish military bases in the region began. The significant nature of this increase would be demonstrated by analysing the preceding seven years. We defined public discourse as including official discourse (public statements and policies adopted by the government in the form of official communications, e.g. government documents, speeches, and statements), and Australian and international media and commentary. Overall, we analysed 673 separate sources. We also analysed academic texts over the last two decades to identify our three analytical frames.

We analysed media reports from major Australian media outlets with large audiences and a focus on international affairs: The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Guardian, Australian Financial Review, Australian Associated Press, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. We analysed media reports from major international media outlets that cover international affairs, particularly Australia and the Pacific Islands region: New York Times, Washington Post, Agence France Press, Reuters, CNN, BBC, NPR, and Financial Times. We analysed commentary from major Australian think tanks and relevant university research centres: The Interpreter (Lowy Institute), The Strategist (Australian Strategic Policy Institute), Australian Outlook (Australian Institute of International Affairs), East Asia Forum (Crawford School at the Australian National University), and DevPolicy (Development Policy Centre at the Australian National University). We also analysed commentary from major international think tanks and blogsites known to cover Australia and the Pacific Islands region: Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Chatham House, Pacific Forum, East West Center, RAND Corporation, and The Diplomat. We included media and commentary sources as the ‘discourse(s) instantiated in these various documents produce meanings and in doing so actively construct the “reality” upon which foreign policy is based’ (Doty 1993, 303). These sources also facilitate the reception and influence the meaning of official discourse by shaping the ‘general system of representation in a given society’ (Doty 1993, 303). This is important because to be taken seriously, official discourse ‘must make sense and fit with what the general public takes as “reality”’ (Doty 1993, 303).

To identify media reports for analysis we searched the Factiva database, using the search terms ‘Beijing’ or ‘China*’ and ‘Pacific Island*’ or ‘Pacific state* or ‘Pacific nation*’. To identify commentary, we searched the online archive of each blog for sources relating to China and the Pacific Islands. Overall, we identified 499 media articles and 131 commentaries. Notably, there was a spike in both media articles and commentaries in 2018, with the distribution over time illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Distribution of media and commentary sources, 2011–2021.

Given our large dataset, we first analysed sources by skim reading to code each against our three frames (some sources were coded against multiple frames). We then extracted the relevant parts of each source into a table and analysed the specific language used, focusing on the processes of subject position, presupposition, and predication. Conscious of intertextuality, we identified when sources referred to each other (explicitly, or implicitly, such as sharing the same language). Finally, we mapped the frequency in which China and the Pacific Islands were mentioned across the media, commentary, and official discourse over time.

China’s evolving presence in the Pacific Islands, 2011–2021

China slowly built a diplomatic and economic presence in the Pacific Islands from the 1970s in the context of competing with Taiwan for diplomatic recognition. By 2011 that competition had cooled, and Taipei and Beijing tacitly agreed to stop competing in 2008. Competition restarted after Taiwan’s 2016 election. Beijing persuaded Solomon Islands and Kiribati to switch their recognition to China in September 2019, reducing the number of Pacific states that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan to four.

During the decade 2011–2021, China’s interests in the Pacific Islands developed a strategic edge. In April 2018, it was reported that China was in talks to build a ‘military base’ in Vanuatu, although both governments denied this. In September 2019, a Chinese company sought to lease Tulagi Island, home to a former Japanese naval base, in Solomon Islands. The Solomon Islands government vetoed the lease, which had been agreed by the provincial authorities. Kiribati’s switch back to recognising China may see the satellite-tracking station China had built there in 1997 updated and returned to operation; it had been mothballed when Kiribati recognised Taiwan in 2003.

China’s economic presence in the region also grew over the decade. State-owned corporations undertook major logging projects and developed fisheries, as well as the Ramu and Frieda River mines in PNG. Nine Pacific states signed up to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),¹ which has seen China invest in infrastructure construction around the world, especially potential ‘dual use’ ports. This led to claims that China was engaged in ‘debt-trap diplomacy’, using lending to pursue the strategic objective of securing military access (Parker and Chefitz 2018). As there are questions about the sustainability of much of the debt taken on by Pacific states, there are concerns that they may be particularly susceptible to such influence (Rajah, Dayant, and Pryke 2019). But whether aid, loans, and the BRI are primarily aimed at strategic, rather than economic, ends remains unclear. Indeed, Fox and Dornan (2018) observed that, while almost half of Pacific states were classified by the IMF and Asian Development Bank as being at high risk of debt distress, and China was the region’s largest bilateral lender (holding approximately 12% of all regional debt), except for Tonga, China’s lending comprised less than half of the total to any one Pacific state. And although China’s aid increased in the last decade, it was still dwarfed by Australia’s contribution, and Beijing’s aid has declined in real terms since 2019: committing US$290 m in 2018, US$1bn in 2019, but only US$4.2 m in 2020 (Lowy Institute 2020).²

Australia’s Pacific Islands policy, 2011–2021

Australia began 2011 under the leadership of a Labor government that sought to reframe Australia’s engagement in the Pacific Islands as a ‘new era of cooperation’ and ‘partnership’ in then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s (2008) ‘Port Moresby Declaration’. The Coalition government continued this framing after coming to power in 2013. Despite their rhetorical emphasis on the region, neither government implemented a broad-ranging regional policy agenda.

The Australian government’s approach changed at the 2017 Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting, when then Prime Minister Turnbull committed Australia to ‘step-change’ its engagement (PM&C 2017). In 2018 Prime Minister Scott Morrison (2018a) said this ‘Pacific step-up’ would include initiatives focused on enhancing development, security, diplomatic, and people-to-people links. This built on Australia’s provision of approximately half of all development aid to the region (Lowy Institute 2020). A dedicated cross-agency Office of the Pacific was created in 2019 to oversee implementation. Notably, apparently to counter BRI lending, Australia created a A$2 billion Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific and allocated an extra A$1bn to its Export Finance and Insurance Corporation to support investment. It also committed funding to major infrastructure projects, including the PNG Electrification Partnership and the Coral Sea Cable, and to redevelop the Republic of Fiji Military Forces’ Blackrock Camp. The latter two projects were reportedly direct counters to offers by China. As part of the security aspects of the Pacific step-up, Australia created the Australia Pacific Security College, Pacific Fusion Centre, committed to maintain a larger military presence, including through an upgraded Pacific Maritime Security Program, and to redevelop the Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island, PNG. Australia agreed on a security treaty with Solomon Islands in 2017, a vuvale (friendship) partnership with Fiji in 2019, and a comprehensive strategic and economic partnership with PNG in 2020. In June 2018 Australia and Vanuatu began negotiations on a bilateral security treaty.

China as an ‘opportunity’

The first frame we identified from the academic literature positioned China as a potential partner for Australia, with its presence in the Pacific Islands presented as an opportunity for cooperation, particularly on aid projects (D’Arcy 2007; Dornan and Brant 2014; Powles 2007; Wallis 2017a; Wallis 2017b). Other proposed forms of cooperation included trade and investment liberalisation (Shiming 2019), policy dialogues, and military exercises, exchanges, and training (Connolly 2016; Zhang 2017a, 2017b, 2020a).

Until 2018, Australian official discourse about China’s presence in the Pacific Islands generally followed its broader approach of seeking to balance its economic and security interests while avoiding explicitly characterising China as threatening. The opportunity frame dominated Australian official discourse from 2011-2019, appearing in 28 of our 31 identified sources during that period. However, this optimism was qualified, with cooperation often presented as a method of influencing China’s behaviour. For example, in 2011, when he was Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd argued that Australia should ‘find a way of working with China that’s constructive, that hopefully encourages them to adopt some of the norms around transparency, accountability and predictability’ (quoted in Gartrell 2011). Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs Richard Marles said in 2012 that Australia ‘did not see Chinese aid projects initiated so far as being linked to its political objectives’, but observed that ‘we just like to be doing it together in a co-ordinated way’ (quoted in Wallace 2012). In April 2013 Prime Minister Julia Gillard (2013a) said that Australia wanted ‘to see countries around the world working for aid and development in the Pacific … we think that there are ways of working together’. During a visit to China, Gillard signed a development cooperation partnership between Australia and China.

In 2013 caution about cooperation with China became more explicit. In May 2013, when discussing the new Defence White Paper, Gillard (2013d) stressed that it was intended to ‘bolster habits of cooperation’, although aware of the ‘risks’ in the ‘changing strategic order’. The White Paper recognised that ‘the growing reach and influence of Asian nations opens up a wider range of external players for our neighbours to partner with’ (DoD 2013, 15), but argued that ‘Australia welcomes China’s rise’ and ‘does not approach China as an adversary’ (DoD 2013, 9, 11). It flagged the ‘Australia-China Defence Engagement Action Plan’ as providing scope for enhanced ‘maritime engagement, peacekeeping cooperation, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief engagement’ (DoD 2013, 62).

As shadow minister from 2011–2013, and from 2013–2018 as Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Coalition government, Bishop also identified the potential for developing ‘joint venture’ development projects with China (quoted in Minus 2011). Like her Labor predecessors, Bishop presented cooperation as allowing Australia to ‘influence the priorities of infrastructure decisions and the transparency around how aid is delivered’ (quoted in Flitton 2011) and to ‘capitalise on our respective strengths’ (Bishop 2014b).

Bishop’s position was in lockstep with her government’s efforts to position China as a potential partner. The Defence Issues Paper 2014 described Australia’s ‘surprisingly close and effective defence relationship with China’ and foreshadowed ‘opportunities for increased practical military-to-military contact’ (DoD 2014, 18). In November 2014 Australia agreed to elevate the relationship to a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership,’ and then Prime Minister Tony Abbott (2014) reported, during a press conference with China’s President Xi Jinping, that ‘our two sides have agreed to reinforce our coordination and communication within multilateral mechanisms including … the Pacific Islands Forum’. In 2016, when visiting China, Bishop (2016) mentioned ‘the opportunities that I see in Australia and China carrying out more joint aid and development projects in the Pacific’.

In 2018, as concern about China’s presence – particularly lending – in the region began to mount, the official discourse began to include more warnings about the potential consequences of China’s behaviour. In August 2018, then Prime Minister Turnbull (2018) said that Australia wanted to ‘work with China … in the Pacific to ensure that our respective engagement, including lending, reinforces our common goals of supporting the sustainable economic development, freedom and wellbeing of the people and nations of the Pacific’. In August 2018 Bishop commented: ‘we welcome the role played by all donors, including China, to support development in the Pacific’, but that it was important they ‘don’t impose onerous debt burdens on regional governments’ (quoted in Lyons 2018a). After taking office in August 2018, Prime Minister Morrison (2018b) commented: ‘we want to continue working with others … such as China – to ensure our engagement strengthens the common goal of enhancing sustainable development and the wellbeing of our Pacific friends’.

Despite its prevalence in official discourse, as Figure 2 illustrates, the opportunity frame was infrequently adopted in the media and commentary, although it was present proportionately more frequently in the commentary than media.

Figure 2. Opportunity frame in media and commentary, 2011–2021.

When it adopted the opportunity frame, the media and commentary argued that China’s interest in the Pacific Islands could be seen as a ‘positive development rather than a challenge, insofar as it creates opportunities for greater cooperation’ (O’Keefe 2013), ‘rather than building any new security or diplomatic arrangements designed to compete with it’ (Hayward-Jones 2013; Hanson and Fifita 2011; Wallis 2017a), with trilateral cooperation on aid projects identified as offering a ‘low risk opportunity’ (Claxton 2013; Smith 2012; Zhang 2016; Zhang 2019a), notwithstanding the differences in approach (Moyle and Dayant 2018).

China as ‘neutral’ Pacific presence

The second frame we identified positioned China as a ‘neutral’ presence in the Pacific Islands. This frame is based on scholarship which did not presuppose that China was inherently threatening. It instead argued that the Pacific Islands region was ‘marginal in China’s strategic landscape’ (Yang 2009, 145) and that ‘China’s objectives are ultimately domestic in nature’ and consequently there was ‘no well-coordinated grand strategy behind China’s presence in the region’ (Pan, Clarke, and Loy-Wilson 2019, 389-390). China’s approach to the region was said to mirror its actions in other developing countries (Wesley-Smith 2013; Zhang 2007), to be driven by economic interests (Hannan and Firth 2015; Zhang 2021), diplomatic competition with Taiwan, support in international fora, and a desire to build its image as ‘a benign, responsible global power’ (Zhang and Lawson 2017, 200-201; Atkinson 2010; Fletcher and Yeophantong 2019; Zhang and Shivakumar 2017). Indeed, China’s presence in the Pacific Islands was said to have grown ‘more by accident than by design’, after Fiji adopted a ‘Look North’ policy following its 2006 coup (Wallis 2017a, 202). China was characterised as having a comparatively ‘small footprint’ in the region, ‘few diplomats, no permanent military presence and relatively limited aid, trade and investment in comparison to other regions’ (Smith 2015, 1), and to lag behind Australia, the US, and New Zealand ‘in important ways’ (Zhang 2020b). Therefore, scholars concluded that ‘the geostrategic threat posed by China’s presence in the Pacific should not be exaggerated’ (Fletcher and Yeophantong 2019, 22; Wesley-Smith and Smith 2021; Zhou 2021). Even if, ‘in the event of armed conflict, more direct action cannot be ruled out if Beijing regards key strategic interests to be at stake’ (Wesley-Smith and Smith 2021, 21), scholars argued that this was ‘far from certain and it would be a strategic miscalculation to hasten this possible future through Cold War style framing’ (O’Keefe 2020, 96).

We coded only two pieces of our 45 identified sources of official discourse against the neutral frame, both being statements by Prime Minister Morrison (2019a, 2019b) recognising China’s growth changed its international role.

As illustrated in Figure 3, relatively few media and commentary pieces adopted the neutral frame. Early in the decade there was some agreement with the academic literature that there was ‘little evidence that China is doing anything more than supporting its commercial interests and pursuing South-South cooperation’, particularly as ‘China has not yet sought to project hard power into the Pacific Islands’ (Hayward-Jones 2013; Claxton 2013). Indeed, one media report observed that ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’ of competition with China ‘can yet be avoided’ (Levine 2012). While the media dropped the neutral frame from 2015, commentary continued to argue that the region ‘isn’t strategically important to China, it isn’t high-priority’ (Safi 2015). Therefore, Australia’s concern was said to be ‘premature’, with China’s presence in the region not driven by strategic competition, but instead by its ‘much larger ‘Going Out’ strategy to expand China’s outreach to the developing world’ (Zhang 2016; Baker 2018). While the neutral frame became less common as the decade wore on, in 2018 commentators sought to debunk the ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ idea, arguing that it was a ‘far stretch’ (Fox and Dornan 2018), particularly as ‘Beijing actually operates in the region under a number of constraints’ (Zhang 2019b). In 2019 commentary therefore argued that Australia should not be concerned about Solomon Islands and Kiribati switching their diplomatic recognition to China, as ‘having China as a diplomatic partner will not profoundly change either country’s economic or social challenges’ (Pryke 2019).

Figure 3. Neutral frame in the media and commentary, 2011–2021

China as a ‘threat’

The third frame we identified from the academic literature was of China as a ‘threat’. This frame was prominent in the 2000s, and presupposed that, as a rising power, China was a potential competitor to Australia and its partners. Scholars argued that China could encourage Pacific states to shift their allegiance away from their traditional partners (Crocombe 2007), that China could test its strategic power against the US in the region (Dobell 2007; Henderson and Reilly 2003; Shie 2010; Windybank 2005) and that China’s increased presence had ‘accelerated the erosion of the United States as a unipolar power’ (Lanteigne 2012, 23). Little academic literature after 2013 explicitly adopted a threat frame despite China emerging as a great power. Instead, there was caution that China’s presence could result in ‘accidental friction’ with Australia and its partners, such as if China sent its army to evacuate its citizens (Connolly 2016, 491), and that China’s aid and concessional loans could fuel corruption and instability in the region, posing a security risk to Australia (Wallis 2017a).

Two pieces of academic work at the end of the decade explicitly adopted the threat frame. In 2020 it was argued that Chinese ‘influence and interference’ in the Pacific Islands was ‘quite brazen’, with the BRI characterised as a tool of China’s ‘grand strategy’ (Connolly 2020, 42). This interpretation was supported in 2021 by Chinese scholars who argued that, while China had economic and diplomatic interests, it also had a geopolitical objective: ‘to counterattack the perceived US containment of China by opening up a “new battlefield” for political influence and economic competition in the South Pacific’ and ‘ensure China’s rise at the systemic (global) level’ (Lei and Sui 2022, 83).

While the official discourse overwhelmingly used the opportunity frame until 2018, in 2019 the threat frame became more common, as illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Threat frame in official discourse, 2011–2021.

The 2016 Defence White Paper implicitly expressed concern about China’s increasing presence in the Pacific Islands. It observed that China would ‘continue to seek greater influence’ and, while hopeful that China had ‘greater capacity to share the responsibility of supporting regional and global security,’ also warned that ‘it will be important for regional stability that China provides reassurance to its neighbours by being more transparent about its defence policies’ (DoD 2016, 42). The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper observed that ‘increasing competition for influence and economic opportunities in Papua New Guinea, other Pacific countries and Timor-Leste, as well as growing aid and loans from other sources, means they can turn elsewhere for advice and assistance’ (DFAT 2017, 100). Without naming China, it cautioned that aid and loans have ‘the potential to strain the capacity of countries to absorb assistance and manage their debt levels’ (DFAT 2017, 100).

2018 saw Australia’s official discourse begin to frame China’s presence as more explicitly threatening. In January 2018, then Minister for International Development and the Pacific Concetta Fierravanti-Wells expressed concern about China constructing ‘useless buildings’ and leaving Pacific states with ‘unsustainable’ debt burdens (quoted in Graue and Dziedzic 2018). In a line that became infamous for China’s response (Jingye 2018), Fierravanti-Wells commented that, in comparison to China, Australia did not ‘want to build a road that doesn’t go anywhere’ (quoted in Pacific Beat 2018b). Instead, she argued that Australia wanted to ‘ensure that the infrastructure that you do build is actually productive and actually going to give some … benefit’ (quoted in Pacific Beat 2018b). Then Foreign Minister Bishop quickly watered-down Fierravanti-Wells’s comments, saying that ‘Australia works with a wide range of development partners, including China’ (quoted in Remeikis 2018). Nevertheless, Fierravanti-Wells’s comments were frequently referenced in subsequent media reports (26 reports) and commentary (three sources), with commentator Graeme Dobell arguing that ‘Fierravanti-Wells is only guilty of voicing in more pointed language the fears expressed diplomatically in our foreign policy white paper’ (Dobell 2018a). Bishop also began to harden her language about China’s lending later in 2018, arguing that it might be ‘detrimental to their long-term sovereignty if they were ‘trapped into unsustainable debt outcomes’ (quoted in Wroe 2018f).

Official discourse began to explicitly name China as a potential threat in 2020, with the Defence Strategic Update stating that:

Since 2016, major powers have become more assertive in advancing their strategic preferences and seeking to exert influence, including China’s active pursuit of greater influence in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is concerned by the potential for actions, such as the establishment of military bases, which could undermine stability in the Indo-Pacific and our immediate region (DoD 2020, 11).

This approach continued in 2021, with Prime Minister Morrison (2021) declaring that: ‘China’s outlook … has changed since our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was formed’. In August 2021, Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne (2021) observed that: ‘There are challenges arising from the much greater role that China is now playing in global affairs … China does take a much more assertive approach in our region’.

The threat framing dominated media reports every year of the decade analysed, except 2015, as illustrated in Figure 5. However, there were proportionately fewer references to threat between 2011 and 2017, reflecting that there were relatively few mentions of China’s role in the Pacific in the Australian media and commentary during that period. The threat framing increased significantly in 2018, as did media and commentary coverage.

Figure 5. Threat frame in media and commentary, 2011–2021.

The primary claim used to support the threat framing in the media and commentary from 2011–2021 was that China’s increased presence in the Pacific Islands had led to growth in its ‘influence’ (Jennings 2016; Brunnstrom and Martina 2021; Callick and Bodey 2014; Flitton 2014; Sheridan 2014). Indeed ‘influence’ was a ‘floating signifier’ (Laclau 2005, 131) in the media and commentary that acquired a pejorative meaning to characterise the nature of China’s perceived threat. Many tools of Chinese statecraft were identified as assumed sources of influence, including ‘no strings’ and ‘soft’ loans (ABC News 2011; Colton 2018; Coorey 2012; Doherty 2018; Flitton 2012; Gartrell 2011; Oakes 2011a; Pacific Beat 2017b), ‘chequebook diplomacy’ (Brien 2012; Wallis 2012), ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ (Wroe 2018d; Davidson 2018; Kehoe, Tillett, and Coorey 2018), Chinese corporations (Pacific Beat 2017a; Wroe 2017), growing diplomatic footprint, ‘illegal Chinese immigrants’, ‘organised crime’ (Herr and Bergin 2011), and training and scholarships (Zhang 2016). But seldom did the media or commentary identify direct causality between these tools and changes in the behaviour of Pacific states that generated substantive strategic gains for China.

From 2016 the media and commentary began to focus on China’s potential strategic interests, warning that ‘building stronger relationships with Pacific Island nations is paramount for China to be able to project power through the Pacific Oceans’ and could ‘lay the groundwork for future hegemony’ (Wyeth 2016). There was also concern about China’s assumed strategic interests in monitoring and surveillance (Kenderdine 2017; Meick, Ker, and Chan 2018). But it was the April 2018 media reports claiming that the wharf China had funded in Vanuatu was ‘trojan horse operation’ and would be turned into a military base (Wroe 2018b), which ‘could see the rising superpower sail warships on Australia’s doorstep’ (Wroe 2018a) that triggered a flood of discussion about China’s strategic intentions – with 28 reports in the first week alone. This was despite both the Vanuatu and Chinese governments immediately denying the claim. Consequently, from 2018 references to ‘China’s strategic ambitions’ (Wroe 2018g) or ‘strategic threat’ (Dobell 2018c; Hayward-Jones 2018) became frequent. This characterisation reflected an assumption that the Pacific Islands were a ‘hotly contested geopolitical space’ (Dayant and Pryke 2018; Mudaliar 2018) that ‘Australia can lead or lose’ (Jennings 2018). From 2018, the term ‘assertive’ (or its derivations) was frequently used to describe China’s behaviour (Karp and Remeikis 2018), as were the militaristic images of China ‘flexing its muscles’ (Agence France Press 2018a), or ‘on the march’ (Australian Associated Press 2018a) as it sought to ‘aggressively expand its strategic presence in the Pacific’ (Packham 2018c; 2019; Callick 2016; Greenfield and Barrett 2018; White 2019) turning the Pacific ‘into a de facto Chinese lake within a decade’ (Jennings 2018; Hughes 2012).

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread in early 2020, media reports also focused on China engaging in ‘vaccine diplomacy’ in the ‘battle for influence’ (Packham 2020; Harris 2020), with Australia said to be ‘in a race against time to secure millions of COVID jabs for the Pacific’ (Packham 2021). There was also increased focus on ‘Chinese hacking and foreign interference’ (Galloway 2021) through China’s ‘penetration of the information domain’ in the region (Dupont 2021; Shoebridge 2021).

The threat framing relied on positioning Pacific states as ‘impoverished’ (Agence France Presse 2018a), ‘fragile,’ with ‘needy island governments’ (Levine 2012) that were ‘vulnerable’ (ABC News 2011) to ‘debt distress’ (Callick 2011) due to their ‘dependence’ (Oakes 2011b) on being ‘heavily indebted’ to China (Colton 2018). This characterisation reflected a longstanding presupposition that Pacific states are an ‘arc of instability’ (Ayson 2007). It also depended on characterising Pacific states as either venal – with China lining ‘the pockets of corrupt officials’ and ‘corrupt elites’ (Flitton 2012; Dziedzic 2018b; Jennings 2018; Packham 2018a) – or passive dupes ‘attached to easy money’ (Australian Associated Press 2018b). Pacific states were frequently presupposed to spend Chinese aid and loans poorly, resulting in ‘cash payments to local politicians and expensive but usually poorly maintained sporting arenas’ (Anderson 2016; Griffiths 2018), or to have ‘mistakenly assumed concessional loans would be eventually forgiven’ (Brant 2015) leading ‘to catastrophe and humiliation’ (Levine 2012). One 2012 headline stated: ‘End the cargo-cult mentality that has ruined our neighbours’ (Hughes 2012), while a 2017 headline warned that: ‘China emerges as all-powerful new deity in Pacific cargo cult’ (Newman 2017). The news that Solomon Islands and Kiribati switched their recognition to China in 2019 was followed by headlines asking ‘What does it take for China to take Taiwan’s Pacific allies? Apparently, $730 million’ (Whiting, Zhou, and Feng 2019), or observing that ‘Taiwan says China lures Kiribati with airplanes after losing another ally’ (Lee 2019). Each headline reflected longstanding pejorative Australian perceptions of the region.

The threat framing also positioned China as a malign actor in the Pacific Islands. Pacific states were described as ‘intimidated’ (Coorey 2011), with little agency to resist China. Fiji was characterised as a ‘geopolitical ‘football’ (Garnaut 2012), and Solomon Islands as ‘the latest domino to fall’ (Korporaal 2019). Indeed, media headlines described China’s behaviour as neo-colonial, with one headline describing ‘China’s Pacific Challenge – a chain of credit colonies’ (Dupont 2018) and reports claiming that: ‘Xi has effectively colonised the region that was once Australia’s sphere of influence’ (Newman 2018). The apparent denial of the agency of Pacific states was also evident in a tendency to frame the Pacific Islands as Australia’s ‘backyard’ (Clark 2018; Townshend and Thomas-Noone 2018; Wroe 2018g), with one 2019 headline declaring: ‘Pacific Neighbours invite bully into the backyard’ (Oriel 2019).

Throughout the decade the media consistently claimed that China’s perceived influence in the region made Australia feel ‘alarmed’ (Agence France Press 2018b), ‘anxious’ (Dziedzic 2018a; Hayward-Jones 2018), ‘fear[ful]’ (Dorling 2011a; Packham 2018b), ‘concern[ed]’ (Dorling 2011a; 2011b). China’s influence was portrayed as zero-sum, with claims that the Australian government saw ‘Beijing’s growing role as coming at Australia’s expense’ (Dorling 2011b). During the early part of the decade this framing focused on post-coup Fiji (Callick and Bodey 2014; Cullen 2011; Dorling 2011a; Herr and Bergin 2011; Kerin 2012; Oakes 2011a) but later on Vanuatu and Solomon Islands. The threat frame also frequently used language of competition and conflict. It commonly characterised Australia and its partners as being in a ‘rivalry’ (Herr and Bergin 2011), ‘battle for supremacy’ (Brien 2012), ‘race’ to ‘vie’ (Cullen 2011; Mcquillan 2012) or ‘compete’ to be a ‘counter’ (Entous 2011; Herr and Bergin 2011) against China.

The prevalence of the threat framing in the media and commentary, particularly after 2018, meant that Australian policy initiatives in the Pacific Islands were frequently presented as a response to China’s presence in the region, rather than discussed for their own merits or acknowledging that they may have had different motivations. For example, Australia’s ‘step up’ was characterised as part of a ‘tug-of-war for regional influence’ (Lyons 2018b), a ‘strategic battle to secure geopolitical and military dominance’ (Packham and Aikman 2018), or part of a ‘great game’ (Sheridan 2018). By framing the ‘Pacific step up’ almost exclusively in terms of China’s perceived threat, the media and commentary contributed to a perception that Australia’s renewed focus on the region was primarily about competing with China, rather than motivated by an interest in the priorities and needs of Pacific states themselves, thereby potentially undermining the capacity of these policies to enhance Australia’s relationships in the region (Morgan 2020; Varrall 2021; Wallis 2021).

Conclusion

The Australian government maintained a cautiously optimistic framing of China’s presence in the Pacific Islands until 2018, positioning China as a potential partner. But this was underpinned by Australia’s longstanding strategic anxiety about any power with potentially inimical interests establishing a foothold in the region. From 2018 onwards, Australian official discourse began to more explicitly frame China’s presence in the region as a threat. This provided at least part of the public rationale for the substantial spending necessary to implement Australia’s ‘Pacific step-up’ policy. China’s presence in the Pacific Islands was more explicitly framed as a threat in the media and commentary before this, but the frequency of that framing (and of coverage of China’s role in the region) increased significantly after the April 2018 reports that China was in talks to build a military base in Vanuatu, echoing changes in the Australian government’s approach. Significantly, the first of these reports claimed that ‘top national security figures in Canberra and Washington’ were ‘deeply concerned about China’s ambitious for Vanuatu’ (Wroe 2018c), suggesting that at least some sources may have come from within the government (Dobell 2018b). The claims in that report were frequently repeated in subsequent coverage. The threat framing positioned China as Australia’s competitor, as it was presupposed to be using its tools of statecraft to influence the region in pursuit of strategic objectives that undermined Australia’s security. It is impossible to isolate Australians’ perception of China in the Pacific Islands from their broader understanding of China’s increasingly activist role in Australia, the Indo-Pacific, and globally. But given the overwhelming frequency of the threat framing in the media and – to a lesser extent the commentary – this likely contributed to constructing China as a threat. This, in turn, likely facilitated public reception of a more threat-oriented framing in the official discourse and support for substantial government investments via the ‘Pacific step-up’. Indeed, the 2019 Lowy Institute Poll found that 73 percent of respondents agreed that ‘Australia should try to prevent China from increasing its influence in the Pacific’. More than half (55 percent) believed that China establishing a military base in the region would critically threaten Australia’s interests, and 54 percent agreed that ‘Australia should partner with Papua New Guinea and the United States in redeveloping a joint military base on Manus Island’ in PNG (Lowy 2019).

Pacific Island leaders have clearly expressed their concern about the threat framing, particularly that it has undermined their agency and autonomy, and contributed to a belief that Pacific states will eventually have to make a strategic choice between China and their traditional partners. Former Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Dame Meg Taylor (2019) has stated she ‘reject[s] the terms of the dilemma in which the Pacific is given a choice between a ‘China alternative’ and our traditional partners’. This suggests that, while the media coverage and commentary explained Australia’s anxiety about China’s role in the Pacific in a way that made sense of Australia’s changing foreign policy approach for the Australian public (Davis and Brookes 2016), much of it has had counter productive effects, undermining Australia’s relationships in the Pacific by exacerbating a threat framing that many Pacific states and leaders reject, and which in fact makes them feel insecure.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the University of Adelaide Summer Research Scholarship scheme, which supported Angus, Isabel, and Alicia to work with Joanne on this project. Joanne is also thankful for the significant amount of work that Angus, Isabel, and Alicia invested in the data collection and analysis for this project over their summer break, and for the thoughtful and constructive feedback of the anonymous reviewers and journal editors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanne Wallis

Joanne Wallis is Professor of International Security in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Adelaide.

Angus Ireland

Angus Ireland is undergraduate students at the University of Adelaide.

Isabel Robinson

Isabel Robinson is undergraduate students at the University of Adelaide.

Alicia Turner

Alicia Turner is undergraduate students at the University of Adelaide.

Notes

1 Pacific Island signatories are: Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. China State Information Center, ‘Belt and Road Portal’, https://eng.yidaiyilu.gov.cn/info/iList.jsp?cat_id=10076&tm_id=80&cur_page=1

2 NB: ‘Data for 2019 and 2020 has not been reported for all donors and is incomplete. 2018 is the latest year of comprehensive aid data from all donors.’