China and Australia have found another battleground for their deepening diplomatic standoff: the Pacific Islands' pandemic response.
Canberra has hit back at Beijing's claims it is derailing the rollout of Chinese vaccines in Papua New Guinea (PNG), the most-populous Pacific island nation. "We support Papua New Guinea making sovereign decisions," Australia's Minister for the Pacific, Zed Seselja, said.
That's not the way Beijing sees it. In early July, Chinese state-run tabloid Global Times accused Australia of sabotaging China's vaccine rollout in the Pacific. At a press conference earlier this month, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry slammed Australia for "undermining vaccine cooperation" in the region.
The islands' location between US and Asia makes them key military staging grounds and the potential site of future defense installations for either Australia or China.
Australia has longstanding economic and cultural ties with the Pacific, and it is crucial to the country's national security to ensure the Chinese government doesn't gain a large foothold in the region.
For China, the region represents an opportunity to expand its influence. Several of the islands are among the last nations in the world to recognize Taipei as a diplomatic partner over Beijing. The Chinese government would like to lure them away from Taiwan as part of its long-running strategy to isolate the island.
Now all that political maneuvering has turned PNG's Covid-19 outbreak into another area of competition as Australia and China present themselves as benevolent partners.
Yet China's 300,000 vaccine donations to the Pacific have failed to meet Australia's nearly 600,000 -- and with Canberra promising to supply another 15 million doses to the region, Beijing is on the backfoot.
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