China is deliberately attempting to “erode leadership, disrupt vital services, and weaken confidence in government” in Palau, and has sent drugs to wash ashore on the Pacific nation to “weaken our community,” the country’s president said Monday.
Speaking at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s International Military Law and Operations conference, Surangel Whipps said his country—one of just a dozen in the world with official diplomatic relations with Taiwan—has also seen economic coercion from China. Whipps described Chinese investors buying up or securing 99-year leases on land and then leaving it empty, as well as a radical dropoff in tourism from China in the last decade.
“A Chinese ambassador told me once, you know, ‘I don’t understand what you’re doing. You need to make the right choice and join the rest of the world and denounce Taiwan. We can give you a million tourists to fill all your hotel rooms.’ And I said, ‘No thank you.’ Sometimes we have to look beyond money. We have to look at what is good for the safety and security of our people long term,” he said.
“We must help our people understand, because of our location, we are under constant threat. I might venture to say that we are already at war, and the best way to combat this is through partnership with like-minded nations who believe that peace comes through strength, and presence is deterrence.”
Whipps’ keynote speech kicked off the four-day event, which drew 200 attendees from 30 different countries—though not China, which was invited, or Taiwan, which was not. The 36th iteration of the conference focused on “legal vigilance and legal diplomacy.”
Adm. Sam Paparo, the leader of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, spoke immediately after Whipps.
“It is my sad duty to report that we are not in an era of peace,” Paparo said. “We are in an era of contested peace. It’s a peace we must win every single day. Aggression from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran is accelerating.”
That aggression is illustrated by the “steady tempo of gray zone operations, maritime coercion, cyber attacks, disinformation, illegal, unregulated, unreported fishing, and legal warfare in our own backyard,” the admiral said. “We see it in China’s shifting strategy from ‘bide our time and hide our capabilities’ to ‘be ready and dare to fight.’ We see it in China’s regular acts of coercion and aggression against the Philippines and in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone…We see in China’s claim to a maritime law that no one else agrees to and no one else recognizes, and we see it in China’s pervasive use of legal warfare as a tool for coercion and a pretext for aggression.”
Paparo and Whipps both stressed the importance of partnerships and collaboration, particularly for deterrence.
“Deterrence, it is exponential when it is exercised together. It’s a shared responsibility among all of us,” Paparo said. “Two allies doesn’t yield 2x deterrence. It yields 4x. Three allies yields 9x.”