Salami tactics

Instead of forcefully raiding and invading a foreign island Xi Jinping’s China uses now the salami tactics.

First they send a private real estate company to buy a piece of land for establishing a beach resort. They do not negotiate with the legal owner but with a subordinate, a governor, a local chieftain or a rebel general. They sign a contract to respect environmental conditions that they violate shortly after. They build a yacht port in the mangroves, use the excavated corals for building a circumferential road for a subdivision with all the amenities like casino and pool. That is the salami slice.

Second: A state-owned company takes over the subdivision. Plenty China Communist Party members occupy the villas. Engineers and workers build an airport and a navy base.  Huawei specialists build surveillance and radar towers. Soldiers install missiles. Military airplanes bring in more armament. Once the island is militarized the rightful owner and the indigenous inhabitants of all the land have no more rights. That is the taking over of the entire salami.

Third is the swallowing of the salami: The rightful government is forced to switch allegiance from Taiwan to Red China, the media are censored and freedom is changed to authoritarian rule. The Chinese give loans to build roads and railways mainly to lead to the mines of rare earths, lithium, nickel, zink, copper, chrome, cobalt, manganese, lead etc. The minerals are hauled to the ports where they are loaded into huge Chinese ships. If the government cannot pay back the loans the debt trap snaps close and the Chinese swallow the salami.

So or similarly it happened to the island nations of Kiribati, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomons and the islands of New Guinea’s Bougainville and Australia’s Keswick Island.

The island nation of Kiribati stretches 6000 kilometers in the South Pacific. One government member told an Australian jounalist team in 2020: “We will never forgive those guys for putting Kiribati on the map for their imperialist aims. ... This is a sad day for Kiribati’s democracy”. Now China has an embassy there. Expect that they will install a no sailing and no flying zone to control trade between America and Asia.

The 5.3 square kilometer island of Keswick lies near Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Park 34 km northeast of Mackay City. In 2019, 20 % of that area was acquired by the Hong Kong registered Bloom Company from a leaseholder of Queensland State for 20 million Australian dollars. Federal Prime Minister Scott Morrison was fuming when he learnt about the illegal deal.

The 96 inhabitants of the remaining 550 hectares complain that they are blocked out of their properties and that bolders block the access to the beach. One couple from the mainland who used to fly and land on their private airstrip was told by the Chinese that they can no longer use it for it is not safe. But they use it.

Diplomatic relations between Canberra and Beijing have reached rock bottom. - Erich Wannemacher