CHINA TO HELP ‘SAVE’ TONGA

NUKU’ALOFA: Tonga desperately needs help to rebuild after being hit by a tsunami and blanket of ash from an underwater volcano.

But the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai might also serve as a warning about China’s ambitions in the area.

The ash that covers many of Tonga’s 170 islands will disrupt agriculture and tourism for months or years, and do more economic damage to a poor country already suffering from the isolation imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The economic and military growth of China is the strategic story of the age and its assertiveness is obvious in the South China Sea. Not content with dominating its own waters, it shows signs of harbouring ambitions to challenge the US states as a Pacific power.

More discreetly, the Chinese government and its state-owned companies are engaged in a campaign of influence-building among Pacific governments, offering development loans and practical expertise in building, mining and forestry.

After riots in 2006 destroyed offices in the Tongan capital Nuku’alofa, Beijing lent money for reconstruction, much of it undertaken by Chinese companies. Tonga still owes $US150m; equivalent to a quarter of its GDP. China has declined to write it off.

To some, this is “debt diplomacy”, a cynical effort to inveigle susceptible countries into taking out loans that they can never repay, thus putting them at the mercy of Beijing.

“The island nations are not the backyard of the US,” Global Times, China’s Communist Party mouthpiece, said in an editorial.

“Tonga is in need of emergency aid, and China said it is willing to help.”