What Pacific island states make of the great-power contest over them

TO STRATEGIC PLANNERS in Beijing and Washington, the newest locus of an intense great-power contest between China and the United States and its allies is self-evident: the vast southern sweep of the Pacific Ocean and its island states. The West first grew concerned in 2018, when a government-directed Chinese bank said it would fund the construction of a wharf in Vanuatu, north-east of Australia. The government in Canberra, Australia’s capital, feared it might be a precursor to a Chinese naval base in the region (it wasn’t). Then, three years ago, Chinese financial and other blandishments led Kiribati and the neighbouring Solomon Islands to switch their diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan, with which they had had ties for decades.