Xi's grip over global waterways slipping

China's mission to control Global Waterways faces a significant challenge from across the globe as leaders become aware of its debt-trap diplomacy and thus, begin to take a stand against XI's wolf warriors diplomats.

China's quest to dominate global waterways is being challenged by global powers such as the US, Japan, India, and regional grouping such as Pacific Island Countries(PIC), which were once considered part of "Beijing's orbit", are no longer a walkover. Beijing's trouble with Water has just begun.

China and many Chinese communities worldwide use the Chinese calendar for traditional purposes. The year 2022 is marked as 'the Year of the Tiger' (Yin) and 2023 as the year of Rabbit (Mao). According to the Chinese Zodiac, the Water element marks the two-year period that started in Feb 2022 and will end in Feb 2024.

Ironically, 2022 has posed a great challenge to China's hegemony on key global waterways; further, it is also losing its grip on island nations due to mistrust emanating from its debt-trap diplomacy.

Immediately on the heels of the recently concluded Quad Leaders Summit 2022, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi travelled to the Solomon Islands on May 26 as part of an eight-nation tour offering a "comprehensive development vision" for the South Pacific region.

The Chinese package offers small island States millions of dollars in assistance, free trade between China & PIC and access to China's vast market of 1.4 billion people.

The prospect also gives "China the chance to train local police, become involved in local cybersecurity, expand political ties, conduct sensitive marine mapping and gain greater access to natural resources," according to Australia's commercial news site, news.com.au.

The news outlet also quoted new elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, saying, "This is China seeking to increase its influence in the region of the world where Australia has been the security partner of choice since the Second World War."

Though the offer was seen as "a major blueprint for multilateral co-operation between China and Pacific island countries in a wide range of issues", it has received pushback from some quarters within the PIC.

Samoa's Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mataafa said, "we have not made a decision as we did not have enough time to look at it." and called for a delay so that the PIC ministers could scrutinise the Chinese proposal "closely."

Chinese Minister Wang Yi, even though he has travelled to other Pacific nations, including Kiribati, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and East Timor, with a so-called "lucrative" offer, has failed "to win the regional leaders." It is not as if, before the year 2022, the global community-appreciated President Xi Jinping and his wolf warrior diplomats. The fact remains that the communists used their fat chequebook diplomacy to entangle small and weak nations (who had geopolitics advantage) in a debt trap under the grab of infrastructure development.

In the last four decades, since its financial sector liberation, the Chinese economy grew at an unmatchable pace, its military might have boosted globally, and with it, the hegemonic mindset was reborn.

The agenda in the south Pacific is to get an agreement that can "lock these small nations from siding with Quad members, thereby ensuring both strategic and geopolitical bandwidth in the region."

However, going by the luke-warm response Minister Wang Yi received proves that China can no longer bulldoze its way with the global community regarding foreign policy and economic development.

Thus, China should prepare itself for more trouble emanating from Water even beyond the year 2024. Hence, its global domination dream, especially in the Indo-pacific region and with island nations it considered in its sphere of influence, is nearly suspended.

(The author is founder, MyStartup TV)