In this session, the panellists will highlight vulnerabilities, opportunities, resilience of these smaller states, and understand their perceptions of the great powers.
2024 ANU CHINA IN THE WORLD FORUM
PANEL | GREAT POWER COMPETITION AND PACIFIC ISLANDS' RESPONSES
The Pacific region is now a new focus of the US-China geostrategic competition. The China-Solomon Islands Security Agreement has exemplified China's growing presence in the region and exacerbated the US' concerns about China's strategic intensions and influence. This session will discuss the great power competition in policy areas including aid, trade, security, climate change and other policy areas in the region. It will also explore responses from the Pacific Island states. Specifically, the panellists will highlight vulnerabilities, opportunities, resilience of these smaller states, and understand their perceptions of the great powers.
Light refreshments provided at 2:30pm. View the 2024 ANU China in the World Forum Program.
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Event Speakers
James Batley
James Batley is a Distinguished Policy Fellow in the Department of Pacific Affairs, a unit of the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University. Prior to joining ANU he had a long career in government. He joined Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs in 1984. In the early part of his career he was posted to Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
Denghua Zhang
Denghua Zhang is a senior research fellow at ANU DPA. He completed his PhD program on Chinese foreign aid and trilateral aid cooperation at ANU.
Henrietta McNeill-Stowers
Henrietta is a Research Fellow (Pacific Security, Geopolitics, Regionalism) in the Department of Pacific Affairs at the ANU. Her research focus is Pacific regional security and the security-migration nexus, particularly transnational crime, criminal deportations, border security, citizenship, and security cooperation.
Dr Sarina Theys
Sarina Theys is a Lecturer in Diplomacy and International Affairs at the School of Law and Social Sciences at the University of the South Pacific. Her current research investigates how individuals and state actors in small and island countries develop and utilize material and ideational resources, including identities, to achieve their objectives.
Graeme Smith
My main research interests are Chinese state and non-state actors in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, the political economy of local government in rural China, and the geopolitics of search engines. I have active projects in China, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Palau, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.