From ‘magic’ grass to roads and schools, China is everywhere in Fiji

Opposite the $100 million Australian-funded Blackrock Peacekeeping Camp in Fiji, a farm is using grass funded by Chinese President Xi Jinping to grow its fortune.

Lal and Kumar are among the most advanced of the Juncao mushroom producers, but more than 2000 farmers have had some sort of training. China’s aid programs – once blunt and brazen, filled with broken buildings, highways to nowhere, and recipients saddled with debt – are becoming more sophisticated. The Juncao farmers may be the first sign of smarter diplomacy by Beijing in the Pacific.

“It was pretty flattened,” says Australian Army Captain Brenton Cathie who is overseeing the construction of the new school. “We’re still in the rebuild phase at the moment, but we’re almost there. We’re doing the finishing stages.”Joe Armao The Deo family lives in Dreketi, about 90 kilometres outside the provincial capital Labasa. Next door to their farm, a Chinese state-backed mine digs tonnes of bauxite - a main source of aluminium - out of the ground.

“The Chinese came in and they offered only one side of the village to get the whole thing and they wanted to sell because the village is desperate for money,” says local homeowner Angeline Lalabalavu.“So there’s part of the village that feels like it wants to have the investment from the mining and this part of the village that does not.”

In Suva this week, at the Pacific Island Forum leaders’ meeting, climate change was the dominant topic of discussion. China’s geopolitical ambitions also loomed large given the Solomon Islands’ first security deal with Beijing in April, and China’s failed push for a Pacific-wide economic and security pact in May.

For that same reason, the Pacific had grown wary of Australia until this year. The Coalition had become known for digging in its heels during negotiations and calling for concessions over key issues - particularly on climate change. The last time the prime minister Scott Morrison attended the forum, in 2019, his Fijian counterpart, Frank Bainimarama, said he would be better off dealing with China.

In Suva this week, the attention was on Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare after his April security deal with Beijing. By the second day of the forum, US Vice President Kamala Harris had committed her country to spending almost a billion dollars more in the region over the next decade.

ErykBagshaw VualikuScribe These people don’t look like the people of Fiji. They look East Indian. Are they imperialists like we got here in American to become a foreign layer of management? If the Chinese plan to use East Indians to occupy land in other nations like NATO did, it willbe immoral, too.

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