On Thursday, Kiribati’s Ministry of Culture and Internal Affairs released the initial results of the Pacific island nation’s first-round parliamentary elections. For the citizens of Kiribati, the election hinged mostly on issues related to the cost of living, national debt, and rising sea levels, while from abroad, it was viewed largely through the geopolitical lens of Chinese influence in the Pacific. AFP reported that Kiribati’s incumbent pro-China president retained his parliamentary seat in a “landslide”:
Results posted by the Pacific nation’s Ministry of Culture and Internal Affairs showed Taneti Maamau won his Onotoa seat with almost 83 percent of the vote.
It was a thunderous endorsement that puts the 63-year-old in a strong position to extend his almost decade-long tenure in a separate vote later this year.
Wednesday’s election was seen in part as a referendum on Maamau’s embrace of Beijing.
[…] Maamau’s chief rival, opposition leader Tessie Lambourne, also won her seat Thursday, garnering more than 50 percent of the vote and avoiding a second-round runoff despite a tough race. [Source]
The second round will take place next week for the few candidates who received less than 50 percent of the votes in their constituencies. Parliament will return on September 13, when candidates for the presidential election are chosen, and voters will then choose the president. Gavin Butler from the BBC outlined the issues at stake in the election, and the extent to which they relate to China:
“In the space of five years we’ve seen a very rapid escalation of China’s political access, economic influence, and increasingly security access into Kiribati and the territory that it controls – a hugely significant change brought on by the incumbent president,” Mihai Sora, director of the Pacific Islands program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, told BBC News.
“That’s the issue that’s at stake: this rapid escalation in ties between Kiribati and China.”
On the ground, Mr Sora said, the I-Kirabiti people will likely have voted based on issues affecting them day-to-day, such as the cost of living, the economy, and the “poor state of government services”.
“But internationally, of course, people will be interested in what foreign policy posture would a new government take,” he added. [Source]
Certain policy measures under Maamau have generated scrutiny over China’s influence in Kiribati. In 2019, the large ocean state switched its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The Solomon Islands switched recognition to China days before Kiribati did so, and in 2022, signed a secret police- and security-cooperation agreement with Beijing, in a significant rebalancing of ties away from traditional allies in the West that sparked intense concern.
Kiribati has in some ways followed a similar path. This February, Reuters revealed that Chinese police were working in Kiribati to support community policing and a crime database program; the Chinese embassy also named the leader of the “Chinese police station in Kiribati” on social media. In July, the Kiribati Police Service announced on Facebook that China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) had donated riot gear and other supplies and helped train Kiribati police, in what one MPS officer described as China’s willingness to “deepen and solidify collaboration in law enforcement and policing and to continuously elevate China-Kiribati relations to a new level.”
Alastair Mccready at Al Jazeera highlighted the debate over who benefits from Kiribati’s close relationship with China:
Kiribati also boasts one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world, covering more than 3.5 million square kilometres of the equatorial Pacific – a pristine marine region roughly the size of India. The 2021 scrapping of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, one of the world’s largest marine reserves and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has resulted in “Kiribati now hosting too many Chinese fishing vessels”, said [Banuera Berina, Maamau’s ally-turned-rival, who was his main opponent in 2020’s presidential election after splitting from the ruling Tobwaan Kiribati Party (TKP) over concern about its dealings with China].
[…] Einar Tangen, a senior fellow at the Taihe Institute in Beijing, paints a more benign and pragmatic picture of China’s relationship with Kiribati. He says the accusations of malevolent Chinese influence in Kiribati are part of the “same playbook” used by the US and Australia to discredit Beijing in other parts of the Pacific, and curtail its influence.
“There’s no politics [in the relationship], there’s no ideology. Kiribati has asked for help, and China has offered it,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Kiribati is not interested in the international politics of the US and China. They’re interested in food. They have one of the lowest GDPs per capita in the area and they’re trying to get on with their life. If somebody offers them more aid, they’re going to take it.” [Source]
Sophie Mak reported for Nikkei Asia that Kiribati’s voters may not be particularly concerned about Chinese engagement or geopolitics more broadly:
[T]here are doubts as to how much increased engagement with Beijing has improved the lives of the country’s 120,000 citizens. Frustration abounds regarding persistent fuel shortages and spotty public services, including hospitals that lack medical supplies, said Rimon Rimon, an investigative journalist based in Kiribati.
[…F]or voters in Kiribati, China’s increasing visibility in the Pacific and Kiribati is unlikely to be a major issue, said Ruth Cross, a first-time candidate campaigning for one of three seats in the electorate of South Tarawa. Cross said constituents were more focused on plans for improving livelihoods, which include boosting education and entrepreneurship, with the goal of lessening the country’s reliance on foreign support.
Voters “don’t want to hear any talk about any of the [geopolitical] issues and things like that,” she said. [Source]
In the past, China’s engagement with Pacific Island Countries (PICs) has typically exacerbated restrictions on press freedom in those nations. As Charlotte Graham-McLay reported for the Associated Press, Kiribati has restricted information access for media and Western observers since its pivot to a pro-Beijing stance:
Analysts say few details about the campaigning or this week’s vote have appeared online and there are few English-language news sources in the country. The blocked or delayed entry of Australian officials to Kiribati and a stalled flow of information between the governments in recent years have prompted anxiety in Canberra about the scale of Beijing’s influence.
“A lot of countries in the region are really trying to find their place with a lot of geostrategic competition,” said Blake Johnson, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Kiribati has “taken the approach of keeping its cards pretty close” and is not divulging details “that might impact the way those relationships are trending,” he said.
[…Rimon Rimon, an independent journalist in Kiribati,] said policy shifts since Kiribati switched to a pro-Beijing stance include a requirement that researchers and reporters apply for permits for filming and a more “hard-line” approach to information access. The government remains very secretive about the content of 10 agreements signed between Kiribati and China in 2022, he added. [Source]
Chinese state-affiliated actors were eager to paint a positive picture of China’s engagement with Kiribati. Ahead of the election, China’s ambassador to Kiribati Zhou Limin praised Maamau’s government and its “historic achievements in various areas,” stating, “In the past year, I have observed an increase in the number of cars on the roads, a wider range of goods in supermarkets, and new entertainment equipment at playgrounds, which are strong proof of the improvement of Kiribati people’s life quality.” In an article about Kiribati’s election, the Global Times criticized what it characterized as Western efforts to undermine Pacific island nations’ cooperation with China:
While foreign media outlets are hyping that the national election serves as a “referendum on the government’s stronger ties with China,” Chinese analysts emphasized that as cooperation between China and Kiribati has stood the test of history and meets the needs of the local community, regardless of who leads the next government in the Pacific atoll nation, the cooperation is expected to continue and achieve greater results.
[…] China’s cooperation with Pacific island nations is in response to their requests to enhance their policing capacity for the sake of social stability and public well-being based on mutual respect and equality. However, since the US has always attached great importance to its military presence in the Pacific as a strategic priority, it follows a brigandish logic to smear and defame China’s cooperation with Kiribati,” Chen criticized. [Source]
