Many Islands
While rebuking Chinese efforts to turn the South Pacific into a battleground for its own internal disputes, Australia's main goal was to maintain peace and stability in the area, which entails both economic growth and international cooperation. For economic growth, these countries need to trade. For international cooperation, being in the United Nations helps tremendously. For either of those to happen, China needed to be satiated.
Most of these island nations have no levers with China. They are for the most part are parliamentary democracies, a hangover from their colonial history. Thus, their people must be kept as employed as possible for the government to survive, which means taking the largest trading links possible. As in most other democracies in the world, the people of the South Pacific Forum islands are not likely to put a vague moral opposition to Chinese tactics ahead of their jobs and livelihood. Additionally, with little money or other resources, no quid pro quo is likely with the (relative) Chinese economic giant.
And one more fact scares these island nations: Chinese pollution control efforts, or their lack thereof, are the only thing standing between them and destruction. China is one of the dirtiest countries in the world, environmentally speaking, both in terms of absolutes and percentages. A climate change of just a few degrees would raise the sea level over and above several of these low-lying islands. Some have reported losing significant percentages of land already, since their beaches are so flatly angled. A statement from the South Pacific Forum (a political grouping encompassing the Cook Islands, Fiji, Nauru, Tonga, Western Samoa, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu, and Australia and New Zealand) said quite accurately that in terms of sea level, "any change at all could spell disaster for the region." So, although the existence of a few small beaches bothers the Chinese little, their action or inaction could have a large impact on the island nations of the South Pacific Forum.
Quite simply, China is not just pursuing its One China policy with Taiwan. It is using this ideological basis to block United Nations membership, to sever vital trading links, and even (implicitly) to threaten the very existence of some smaller nations. While the United States finds it all too easy to overestimate China, the many islands of the South Pacific are finding China impossible to ignore. To
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