https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/m...ific-tq99hl7l9
Macron promises closer ties with Japan to oppose Chinese expansion in the Pacific
President Macron has pledged to bolster France’s security ties with Japan as western allies pivot to the Pacific to try to counter Chinese expansionism.
Macron arrived in Tahiti yesterday for his first official visit to France’s Pacific territories, where he is expected to lay out a strategy to oppose Beijing’s rising incursions and influence.
He had earlier met Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s prime minister, in Tokyo after which they issued a joint statement committing to work closer on defence for a “free Pacific”. They expressed “serious concerns” about Beijing’s crackdown on rights in Hong Kong and on the ethnic Uighur community.
France has substantial territory and economic interests in the Pacific. French Polynesia, an archipelago of more than 100 islands, has vast mineral resources and fisheries, a source of tensions with Beijing’s trawler fleet.
An Élysée official said that Macron would present “the Indo-Pacific strategy and the position France intends to maintain in this increasingly polarised zone”…..
The UK announced last week that it would permanently deploy two warships to the region after the carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, and its escort ships sail to Japan in September through the South China Sea, which China claims as its own.
Macron has said that France will help South Pacific nations to launch a coastguard network to counter “predatory” behaviour as China expands its maritime reach, often with paramilitary fishing vessels.
“To better cope with the predatory logic we are all victims of, I want to boost our maritime co-operation in the South Pacific,” Macron said after a video conference with Pacific leaders.
The president has been pushing for a strategic alliance with India and Australia to respond to challenges in the Asia-Pacific region.
Paris showed its military capabilities in the Pacific last month when it sent Rafale jet fighters, troop transport aircraft and air-to-air refuellers to Tahiti to show that its forces could intervene in the region in less than 48 hours.
The month before, French, American and Japanese troops carried out their first joint military drills, on land and at sea off Japan. Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, said France was an “ideal partner” as Washington was seeking alliances against Beijing.
China’s ambitions in the region, where it has been investing in nations, appear to have suffered a blow in Samoa where the country’s first female prime minister is preparing to take office on Monday after a 100-day stand-off with the country’s long serving, pro-China incumbent, who refused to accept defeat in the election.
Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, 64, has said that she will scuttle China’s plans to build a wharf to berth up to 12 large vessels near Samoa’s capital, Apia. The $90 million project was backed by Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, 76, who claimed that it would benefit local families.
Many of the 290,000 people in France’s Pacific territories hope that Macron confirms compensation for victims of radiation after the 30-year nuclear testing programme that began in the Pacific in 1966.
Studies have estimated that more than 100,000 people were affected by fallout from at least 175 underground and atmospheric nuclear tests. They remain a source of deep resentment. Only 63 French Polynesians have been compensated for radiation exposure since the tests ended in 1996.