State Councilor and Foreign Affairs Minister for the People’s Republic of China Wang Hi is in Samoa to meet with Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa.
He arrived in the country tonight.
A bilateral agreement signing ceremony to follow in the afternoon and the Samoa media will have the opportunity for photos opportunity at the Samoa Tourism Authority fale samoa.
The announcement was confirmed in a statement issued by the Government.
Meanwhile Radio New Zealand reports that Minister Wang Yi was in Kiribati earlier this week with the country’s President Taneti Maamau to discuss bilateral relations.
Mr Wang’s short trip to Tarawa was confirmed late on Tuesday by the Kiribati government and is his second stopover in a Pacific island country after a 24-hour visit to Solomon Islands.
Local journalist Rimon Rimon said the secretive nature of the visit had angered some locals.
He said the Chinese foreign minister landed on Tarawa and was met by cabinet minister Makarite Temari.
The visit is only expected to last for four hours.
Mr Rimon said the visit by the high-level delegation is significant because a potential security deal – similar to the one between China and Solomon Islands – is likely to be on the agenda.
“All the information we tried to get from the government, they have been very secretive about it, so at this stage we do not know, the government has not disclosed what the agreements are,” he said.
Mr Rimon said all government officials that meet with the Chinese delegation will go into quarantine after the meeting as the country is still under Covid-19 restrictions.
The visit to Samoa is part of the Foreign Minister’s tour in the Pacific.
In the meantime, Al Jazeera reports that China is seek a wide-ranging security and economic deal with 10 Pacific states during Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s trip to the region this week, according to the Reuters news agency.
Wang is due to land in the Solomon Islands on Thursday at the start of a 10-day tour that will also take him to Kiribati, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and East Timor between May 26 and June 4.
During the trip, Wang will take part in the second China-Pacific Island Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Fiji where he is expected to push for a five-year action plan and a joint communiqué.
The draft of that communiqué, which was shared with Reuters, details how China and the Pacific nations can “strengthen exchanges and cooperation in the fields of traditional and non-traditional security”.
Details include a planned China-Pacific Islands Free Trade Area, but also agreements on police training and law enforcement operations, as well as plans to cooperate on data networks, cybersecurity and smart customs.
The last point would give Chinese tech giant Huawei the green light to enter the Pacific market and build 5G networks.
The company has been barred from operating in several Western and US-allied countries due to security concerns around its close ties to the Chinese state.
The United States and Australia have until now also blocked Huawei from building submarine cables and mobile networks in the Pacific, according to Reuters.
The draft plan has alarmed at least one Pacific country, the Federated States of Micronesia, which is a close ally of the US.
