A mention of Taiwan was removed from the Pacific Islands Forum’s final statement after a weeklong annual meeting, apparently at China’s request.
The Pacific Islands Forum is a crucial diplomatic assembly for 18 island nations plus Australia and New Zealand.
In 2019, six Pacific nations recognized Taiwan, but that number has since dwindled to three.
Initially the forum’s statement, issued on Friday, reaffirmed the standing of self-governing Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.
Leaders pose for a photo at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024.
Ben Mckay/AAP Image via AP
However, by Saturday, this reference had been removed.
Officials in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, offered no explanation for the change.
A video posted by a news outlet late on Sunday appeared to show a Pacific leader assuring China’s special envoy, Qian Bo, that Taiwan’s mention would be removed following Qian’s demands.
The incident overshadowed the conference and drew attention to the tense debate in the region over China’s role.
Anna Powles, a professor at Massey University, said the forum struggled to balance regional agendas with external geopolitical pressures.
“The ability of the forum to manage increasingly demanding regional agendas while dealing with external actors is clearly at risk,” she said.
The Pacific Islands Forum began in 1971 to coordinate regional responses to global issues.
Its leaders were some of the first to urge action on climate change due to their location as low-lying islands at risk from rising sea levels.
These annual meetings were not often attended by outside actors until recent years, when China’s increasing influence in the region triggered Western interest in the summits.
This year’s summit aimed to focus on climate change havoc, debt crises, health and security, including fundraising for a Pacific-led climate and disaster resilience facility in Tonga.
Major powers were warned about overshadowing the summit prior to the conference.
“We don’t want them to fight in our backyard here. Take that elsewhere,” Baron Waqa, the forum’s secretary-general and a former president of Nauru, told reporters in July.
For most of the summit, there were efforts to demonstrate cooperation from major powers.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and China’s envoy both expressed a willingness to collaborate on Pacific projects
“It’s a different approach, that’s for sure,” said Mihai Sora, director of the Pacific Islands Program at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, adding that in the past the United States and China had each cast the other as the region’s aggressor.
“I remain deeply skeptical about what potential there would be for any credible cooperation.”
An Australian-funded regional policing program, aimed at countering China’s offers to Pacific nations, was announced without provoking significant backlash from Beijing.
“China welcomes all parties to make concerted efforts for the development and prosperity of the Pacific Island countries,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian when asked about the initiative Wednesday.
Campbell was later recorded on a reporter’s microphone telling Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that the United States had stepped aside in the Pacific policing matter to allow Australia to take the lead.
The conference’s final communiqué set out a new tiered structure for partner nations, who must now prove their genuine involvement with a number of Pacific nations to secure permission to attend the annual summit.
It also included a sentence affirming the forum’s 1992 agreement on Taiwan’s standing with the organization.
It is suggested that leaders privately agreed to allow Taiwan’s ongoing attendance at the summit even though the new tiered structure might otherwise exclude it.
“Taiwan was allowed to be in Tonga and have meetings with its partners and that continues to be the understanding going forward,” Surangel Whipps Jr, president of Palau, one of three Pacific nations to recognize Taiwan, told The Associated Press on Saturday.
But China’s Qian told reporters on Friday that the sentence in the leaders’ final statement “must be a mistake” and insisted a correction was required.
Soon after, the Pacific summit’s communiqué was unlinked on its website.
The next day, officials circulated a new document to reporters with the line affirming Taiwan’s involvement removed.
“The version as finalized does not change nor impact the decisions of the meeting, nor any standing decisions of the forum leaders,” a forum spokesperson, Lisa Williams-Lahari, told the AP in a written statement.
On Sunday night Radio New Zealand published footage taken in public by a reporter that showed Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown apparently telling the Chinese envoy, Qian, “we’ll remove it,” in reference to the document, as the pair shook hands.
Brown did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said in a statement supplied to the AP Monday that the communiqué did not jeopardize its position in the forum or remove its right to participate.
“Taiwan expresses the strongest condemnation to China’s arrogant intervention and unreasonable behavior that undermines regional peace and stability,” spokesperson Jeff Liu said.
The Solomon Islands, which switched diplomatic allegiance from Taipei to Beijing in 2019, will host the 2025 summit.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press
