Don’t force Pacific Island nations to choose between us or China, says UK Royal Navy admiral

WEST 2025 — Western countries should avoid pressuring Pacific Island nations from making a binary choice between working with China or the United States and its allies, an admiral from the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy warned, citing the massive maritime might the Chinese could bring on smaller countries.

“The way in which global trade is interconnected at the moment means that China has a trump card of maritime trade that no other nation on the planet’s got,” Rear Adm. James Parkin, who is responsible for overseeing the development of the Royal Navy’s technologies, told attendees at West in San Diego on Wednesday.

Parkin specifically cited China’s shipbuilding infrastructure, which is consistently rated as the best in the world when measured in number of ships built per year.

The Chinese government “passed a law that every merchant ship can be changed to be a state-owned vessel in era of combat,” Parkin said. “So, as well as the silhouettes of warships versus warships … there’s another 10,000 state-owned Chinese vessels which could be brought to bear in an era of conflict.” More specifically, he said China could use its fleet to create an “almost universal maritime trade embargo” which would have immediate consequences for smaller, secluded Pacific Island countries.

US Coast Guard and Navy leadership often talk publicly about the assistance they strive to provide to smaller island nations in the Indo-Pacific as a means of military diplomacy. They also warn those same nations about the coercive tactics the Chinese have used: offering money and aide up front, but then later calling in a debt to gain access to useful ports and other resources.

“The [People’s Republic of China] has resorted to corruption, bribery, and personal threats to advance its influence in the [Pacific Island countries],” according to the Pentagon’s 2024 report on China’s power. “In March 2023, outgoing Federated States of Micronesia President David Panuelo criticized the PRC for its widespread bribes of Micronesian officials and reported PRC officials made direct threats to his personal safety.”

Although US military officials don’t directly ask these countries to pick sides in the way Parkin stated, they do stress the importance that these nations and others view the United States as its partner of choice over China. Asked about this, Parkin said, “I think if you look at the different levers of power, the diplomatic, the industrial, the military and the economic, in times of peace, people don’t connect to those elements.”

“What my points are reflecting is that in time of conflict, clearly, the military element of those four levers of powers is much more important,” he said, “but if the other three levers have already been locked down, then we may not get the answer we want when it comes to the way in which other independent nations may choose to go.”