New Zealand is alarmed by the lack of transparency surrounding a potential pact between the Cook Islands and China. The director of the Lowy Institute's Pacific Islands Program speaks to TaiwanPlus about the ramifications for the region of a Cook Islands-China pact.
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00:00Mihai, what is the potential breadth of cooperation between China and the Cook Islands?
00:06China has been involved in infrastructure and development projects in the Cook Islands
00:11for years, and of course, more broadly in the region, but the visit and particularly
00:17the framing of this visit from Prime Minister Mark Brown suggests that there's potential
00:22deepening of engagement in areas including trade, investment, and even possibly security.
00:29And security is one of the issues that New Zealand has raised.
00:34What are the potential implications for the Cook Islands coming to a maritime or other
00:39security arrangements with China?
00:42Now Cook Islands has a constitutional relationship with New Zealand.
00:47It's part of the New Zealand realm.
00:50And so you would imagine that in the interest of diplomacy, if nothing else, that Prime
00:55Minister Mark Brown would actually be more transparent in laying out what is on the table,
01:01what his intentions are, and also what he's heard from Beijing in terms of what China's
01:05intentions are for their relationship with Cook Islands.
01:09But in the absence of that, and again, against the backdrop of that intense competition,
01:14I think it's quite reasonable for the New Zealand government, other Pacific countries,
01:19and other traditional security partners to kind of scratch their head and wonder what's
01:25really in play here, given China's surprise security pact with Solomon Islands in 2022,
01:32for example, its rapid political and security escalating relationship with Kiribati.
01:39So it's not a neutral space.
01:42What can we learn from those other security arrangements with Kiribati, for example, and
01:48the Solomon Islands to say what might happen with the Cook Islands arrangement should it go forward?
01:56Now, look, we don't want to put the horse before the cart.
01:59And Prime Minister Mark Brown has verbally said that he won't be considering sensitive
02:06areas of security cooperation with China.
02:10But again, in the absence of more concrete evidence of that, it's difficult to say.
02:16You know, the security relationship between Solomon Islands and China, for example, has
02:21resulted in a muddling of security training and security assistance provision to that country.
02:29Now, what it shows to other Pacific countries is that, you know, this trend of increased
02:36transactionalism, this fueling of a bidding war essentially between traditional partners
02:44and new partners can work out in their favor in the sense that it might encourage New Zealand
02:50and other partners to increase their offers of assistance and support to two Pacific countries
02:56at the same time courting new initiatives and new economic activities.
03:03Could you go into a little bit of detail about how New Zealand might respond to this deal
03:09should it go forward or how New Zealand might act with its own foreign policy?
03:15Look, if New Zealand's relationship with Kiribati is any indicator, you know, if Cook Islands
03:24signs up to cooperating in an area that the New Zealand government deems to be sensitive
03:30or contravening the constitutional arrangement between Cook Islands and New Zealand, it may
03:36choose to have a second look.
03:39I don't want to use too strong a form of words, but it may scrutinize its existing package
03:45of support that it provides to Cook Islands.
03:48On the other hand, it may seem, it may feel that it needs to reassert its role as a primary
03:55partner for Cook Islands and it may look to elevate its cooperation in existing or new
04:01areas.
04:02So, you know, there will be a decision point for the New Zealand government, but that all
04:06really depends on what Prime Minister Mark Brown signs up to on the state visit to Beijing.