Sydney think tank says China less generous toward Pacific

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — China gave significantly less aid to Pacific island nations in recent years despite Beijing’s diplomatic efforts to increase its influence in the region, according to a Sydney-based think tank.

Chinese aid to the Pacific shrank by 31% in 2019 to $169 million, the Lowy Institute said in its annual Pacific Aid Map released Wednesday.

Only the World Bank pulled back more that year, but that had been expected after aid tripled between 2017 and 2018 through an extraordinary burst of investment, said Jonathan Pryke, Pacific Islands program director at the international policy think tank.

“There has been a consistent level of growing engagement from China in previous years and we’ve seen this sharp decline in 2019 which is against the narrative,” Pryke said.

The map is a data base covering 66 donors and tens of thousands of aid projects in 14 Pacific island sovereign nations, which exclude the French territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

Data since 2019 including the impact of the pandemic are incomplete and are not included in the latest report.

Pryke said preliminary data since 2019 suggested that China’s lowest contribution to the Pacific region since 2012 was not an anomaly.

“We’ve done some cursory analysis of 2020 on China as well and we haven’t seen a bounce back,” Pryke said.

International aid to the Pacific dropped by 15% in 2019 to $2.44 billion. The Lowy Institute expects data will show contributions rose last year in response to the pandemic.

It is not clear why China pulled back from the Pacific since its aid to the region peaked at $287 million in 2016.

Chinese President Xi Jinping made a state visit to Papua New Guinea in late 2018 ahead of an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit hosted by one of the most...