‘What’s next’ as China’s Pacific island diplomatic wins mount?

For the remote and financially struggling Pacific nations, switching diplomatic allegiance merely reflects their long-standing strategy of weighing what benefits they can extract from the diplomatic tussling rather than having definitively chosen to side with China.

The view from Beijing is clearer.

“From China’s side, I think it can be called a diplomatic victory,” said Professor Izumi Kobayashi of Osaka Gakuin University in Japan, who is president of the Japan Pacific Islands Association.

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