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French president Emmanuel Macron has warned against “a new imperialism” in the Pacific on a visit to the region, where China has been extending its influence with security and trade pacts.
In a speech on the island of Vanuatu, a French and British-governed territory before it became an independent republic in 1980, Macron said the Indo-Pacific region’s sovereignty was being undermined by “predatory big powers” and that their interference was growing.
“In the Indo-Pacific and especially in Oceania a new imperialism is appearing, and new power logics which threaten the sovereignty of numerous states, often the smallest and most fragile,” Macron said.
The visit is the first by a French head of state since Vanuatu’s independence. The week-long tour of the Polynesian islands included a stopover in the nickel-rich French territory of New Caledonia.
Macron will also visit Papua New Guinea, on the heels of US defence secretary Lloyd Austin who was there on Thursday to discuss deepening ties. A new security pact was agreed between the US and Papua New Guinea in May.
The Pacific has become a fulcrum for geopolitical tensions in the past decade as China has increased its diplomatic and financial presence in some of the smallest countries in the world.
That push culminated in a security pact between Beijing and the Solomon Islands last year, which triggered a more concerted effort from Australia, the US and New Zealand — the region’s traditional powers — to rebuild economic and strategic partnerships in the Pacific and to better engage on issues including climate change.
The US has in recent months been reopening embassies in the region, from the Solomon Islands to Tonga, that had been closed for decades. Washington along with its allies is looking to counter China’s influence and its attempt to build security ties as tensions over Beijing’s relationship with Taiwan deepen.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken also visited the Pacific this week, where he said the door was open for New Zealand to engage with Aukus — the trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK and the US — and he raised concerns over China’s investments in the region on a stopover in Tonga.
Macron did not name China or the US in his speech, but he has sought to defend French interests in the region and to project France as an alternative ally with a deep history the Pacific. About 1.5mn French citizens live in the region and some 7,000 of the country’s soldiers are spread across several bases there.
On Thursday, Macron hit out at “foreign ships fishing illegally” in the region’s waters and criticised the “numerous loans made with leonine conditions which are quite literally strangling development”.
Hervé Lemahieu, director of research at the Lowy Institute think-tank, said: “Macron is looking to distinguish France from the Pacific power plays of both China and the United States. But Paris comes from a long way behind in regional engagement stakes.”
France and Australia have worked to defuse diplomatic tensions that followed the signing of the Aukus agreement in 2021 that tore up a large submarine contract with Naval Group, majority owned by the French government.
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