ABSTRACT
China’s relations with Pacific Island Countries (PICs), as seen from its recent diplomatic endeavors in the Pacific Ocean region or Oceania, and developed through the China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation (CPIC) Forum, constitute a foreign policy approach that stands apart from its usual style of advancing and institutionalizing neighborly interactions. This approach to diplomacy is tripartite: to engage with different players, to tackle different issues, and to use different modus operandi. As to engaging with different players, the CPIC Forum is the only regional forum for cooperation and economic development initiated by China that includes itself as a continental state, with all other participants being island countries that are postcolonial creations with which China had no official relations before their independence. As to tackling different issues, unlike other regional arrangements in which China actively configures or participates, the CPIC Forum is one in which aid, fisheries, and tourism figure prominently, as these are economic aspects held in particular significance by the governments of the PICs. As to using different modus operandi, this CPIC Forum is the first of its type to involve China and the PICs exclusively, without the participation of the USA, Japan or Australia – countries usually regarded as the traditional powers in the Pacific/Oceania – in a relationship of one large to many small entities. This tripartite approach to relations with PICs clearly establishes China as the leading country in the CPIC Forum, and also the newest power to be reckoned with in the diplomatic and economic spheres of the region. Even so, the initiation and development of the CPIC Forum was in a sense an imitation of, and also a catalyst for, active Japanese involvement in cultivating its diplomatic and economic role and influence in the Pacific.
