China and Australia compete for Pacific supremacy 

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One thing not mentioned is the increasing authoritarianism of the Solomon Islands PM. He and his party have recently voted to delay their elections until 2024. This adds much needed context for his lean towards China. It's not just one that is purely economic in nature, as the video implies.

From a purely economic standpoint, Australia and China are natural trading partners. Each possesses in abundance what the other lacks. But from a political and cultural standpoint they are the complete opposite. The opposite is true with Australia - US relations. Culturally and politically we are natural allies, but economically the relationship is not so natural. The US are competitors in some areas. Australian relations with the Pacific Islands have not really been an issue of great public importance or much thought. The general public perception is that our economic aid to the south Pacific goes to line the pockets of corrupt local politicians and strong men without much in return. The greatest contribution seems to be in seasonal farm workers and professional rugby and RL players. Great analysis, and great video. Keep up the good work. Always nice to see you direct your attention our way from time to time.

Its going to be amazing to watch power plays of two massive land masses throwing massive amounts of money to try attain the support of tiny islands.

In Africa, we say: when two elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers.

As a Papua New Guinean, I see my country almost as a pawn in the game of these world powers. My country is beautiful, has 800 languages is very ethnically and culturally diverse and is blessed with natural resources and farmland enough to supply the pacific. Our leaders are too busy filling their own pockets, and sadly my country of only 8 million people is rife with corruption. I hope one day my country can rise to become a world power.

I've always loved that Shirvan cares about and is generally informed about my country, Australia.

As an australian I can unequivocally tell you we do not exactly "see eye to eye" with China which is putting it mildly.

An important historical background fact is that during WWII that Japan occupied the Solomon Islands for the specific purpose of cutting off Australia's Sea Lines of Communication with the USA and effectively being able to take Australia hostage.

That "Harold E Holt" Sub communication base is named after the Australian PM who drowned in the 60s. We also named a community swimming pool after him here in Melbourne.

Australia's former Coalition government took their eye off the ball, and treated the pacific islands governments like 4th class citizens. also the debt traps that many pacific islands have fallen into have left them quite vulnerable to chinese coercion, and honestly australia hasnt been much better. Australia sold a 99 year lease to the port of darwin to a chinese company... chinese investment in australia is massive.

I really like the map with EEZ borders. Can you please say where you obtained that, unless it’s proprietary of course.

Glad Micronesia got the name drop at the end, I was waiting on their mention along with Guam and the other Northern Marianas Islands. Thanks to the Compact of Free Association, Micronesians are able to freely move throughout, seek employment, and live in the U.S. like any other citizen, minus the citizenship. Additionally, while I have no source on this, there has been rumors floating around that the U.S. is planning on making a military base in Yap (one of the islands in the Federated States of Micronesia). China has been making their own moves on the island, sending people to open up businesses there, and last time I visited there was even a Chinese radio station. I am very interested in how the situation will develop in the next couple of decades.

American and Australian blood and treasure are the only reasons The Solomon Islands exist as an independent country.

Very high quality video! Some of the best geopolitical analysis on this website. Incredible research volume and accuracy.

Just here to say a huge THANK YOU to the Caspian Report team! Your videos are an incredible source of information and your production value only keeps growing. Thank you for taking the time to make this content and I hope we as a viewing community are showing enough gratitude!

great video as always! its crazy how much your production quality has improved over the past couple of years - its great to see your channel doing well

Thank you for this very objective, honest and not biased documentary. Your videos keep getting better 💪🏻

Top quality. The graphics are becoming better and better, it's a joy for the eyes to watch this, and as usual for the mind to understand the finer points of geo-politics a bit better.

Your videos are amazing, thank you so much for all the effort you put into them! It is greatly appreciated

I was literally assigned an essay on this for monday. Thank you very much for the informative entertainment. I'm a big fan of the channel, hope you the best.

Perfect way to start a Saturday morning. A cup of java and the latest Caspian Report. Coffee ☕️

Great video as always. I do think much could have been added if both Taiwan and New Zealand were included as additional patterns/actors when one considers that their interests in the region align closely with that of Canberra and Washington.

Not only is your information always thought-provoking and impartial, but your graphics have improved substantially. In addition, your comment section is usually full of thoughtful comments which motivate me to dig deeper. Thanks again for your nuanced analysis.

What a great video. You give such incredible information and points of view that most of us are not able to see. Forever your loyal fan.

Another concise and informative clip from CaspianReport, well done! I very much appreciate the channel's objective analysis of geopolitical and geoeconomic issues. As an open question to the channel's viewers, what other channels would you recommend, that cover similar subject matter, with such a high degree of excellence?

Thank you for another great video !

Keep up the good work Shirvan. We all need your insight.

Always interesting to hear what my country is doing 🇦🇺

Greetings from Papua New Guinea. Thank you for finally featuring the region. Very excellent analysis! Good to see that you've highlighted the agency of Pacific Islands Nations in this saga. PNG's moment of playing the super powers came after the 2004 with the state visit by then Prime Minister Somare to Beijing to sign a Nickel mining deal. Somare then followed this up in 2008 with the signing of the PNG LNG deal with Exxon Mobil which was backed by western government. The culmination of PNG playing the powers that be would be at the 2018 APEC Summit in Port Moresby. The game of chess continues today.

I can remember getting into a pretty toxic thread back then complaining about Australian forces letting the Chinese businesses be targeted during the riots, but when l finally learnt the details it clearly wasn't the Australian forces at fault. Australia had forces on the ground to quell the riots within 48 hours of being asked to come, but by then the locals had already destroyed the china town district and a lot of Chinese businesses. The two big problems were that a lot of locals just don't like the Chinese (there are a bunch of reasons, it's not about race, it's primarily about their way of doing business) and because one of the opposition leaders was trying to push the narrative that Australia let the riots happen in order to undermine the position of the pro Australian government. But it's a bit hard to blame the Australians for the damage that was done before they even got there... Sadly this is pretty normal for the region, the general population are fairly poorly educated and have limited access to local news sources so rumour and misinformation can spread very quickly and easily.

Well, that was a more stylized intro than what Caspian Report usually dabbles with, and I am here for it.

As an Australian I thank you for these invaluable insights

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. This video was one of the rare sources of analysis that dive into the Pacific geopolitics without the spin usually accompanying the topic. Most of the news from the region are always about Chinese artificial islands or crossings of maritime boundaries and it's been excruciatingly hard to find the factors and the lay-of-the-land so to speak about what's behind said decision-making. Those factors implicate a lot of the usual suspects, but it's always another needle in a haystack to sift through. So once again - thank you so much for sticking with the movers and motivators shaping the regional spheres of influence. Please keep it up :)

6:55 that's yet another interesting layer to your indepth analysis! =)

Alyways nice to have a CaspianReport and a GTBT video at the same day

brilliant, as always thank you for your work!

As an Indonesian, this always bothers me, as unlikely as it is, I hope both of them can settle things diplomatically and keep Indonesia out of this

I don’t think it’s purely strategic or economic national interest. Maybe 10 years ago, I would have been reluctant to say it is shaping up as a Cold War of civilizations; but with Ukraine - it feels like these teams are solidifying between East and West.

another great piece shirvan!

6:42 It's interesting how on this graph, Fortescue is the only mining company not majority American-owned. Because its owner, Andrew Forrest, is the only Australian mining magnate who has criticised the government's hawkish China policy 🤔

As an Aussie who loves Chinese History, this is my dream video!!

Very interesting, thank you!

Incredibly high quality content. Object and brilliant. Thank you

When an Australian Prime Minister considered closing Pine Gap in the 70s, the US was instrumental in getting rid of him. The late queen also had a hand in his removal.

Does anyone else think the name Harold Holt being applied to Sinking submarines is a bit of a dark joke?

Love the content, I would love to see some written form of these videos too! Plus, would you be able to have your sources available in your bio?

Great work as always

great stuff as always !

USA will never sit back while someone attacks Australia, i will volunteer first day

I think you understimate how important Australia is to the US. The US's main intelligence gathering operation in Asia Pacific are housed in Australia and Australian military alliance with the US is pretty much all but guaranteed.

Thank you, this was a very professional analysis…

Great video. I really enjoyed it.

Excellent analysis

As always. Excellent content! Keep it up.

This explains a lot. Thanks. 👍

awesome video dude! best one yet

From a Pacific perpsective, you covered the topic pretty well, but in relation to Pacific geopolitics, the abscence of New Zealand in this video is quite significant. From a global perspective, it's easy to percieve NZ as a non-power, but this is one region where it has significant and outsized influence, often outstripping Australia (particularly in Polynesia) as it isn't as aligned with the US. New Zealand generally has much more friendly and constructive relations with PI countries, whereas Australia relishes its middle-power status and is considerably more forceful in the region, to the dislike of PI countries. This is part of the reason why the Solomons deal happened, Australia (most prominently under the Morrison govt) hasn't been particularly well-liked in the region mostly due to climate change-related issues and general ignorance of the region, which is why the Albanese government has made such an effort to make amends. But, both NZ and Aus made mistakes in the aftermath of the Fiji coup in the region generally that have allowed China to usurp so much influence in the vaccum left behind. New Zealand and Australia have some of the worst records of neo-colonialism that they poorly attempt to brush under the carpet, from pure negligence in Samoa that led to the deaths of thousands during the Spanish Flu on the part of New Zealand, the cancellation of thousands of Samoans post-1949 NZ citizenship in the 1980s under Muldoon's dawn raid policy in NZ, or the destruction of Nauru for phosphate mining by Australia. You can't really blame the Pacific for leaning towards China when it has been treated like a dusty welcome mat by New Zealand and Australia since their independence. The telecom point is particularly relevant. NZ and Australia spy on pretty much all Pacific comms for the US, it's been a contentious issue in New Zealand where many NZ citizens live in PI countries, where the NZ government is conducting mass intellgence-gathering on their own citizens. NZ and AU send all the unprocessed data to the US, and only get back what's relevant to them. The scale of intelligence-gathering in PI countries by NZ and AU is astronomical, some people joke you can hear the line click to record international calls as it passes through the NZ exchange. Honiara's Chinatown is also quite relevant. When the riots happened, it is claimed that Australian personnel were told not to protect Chinese-owned infrastructure and businesses, shooting themselves in the foot.

Can we point out the comedic significance of a submarine contacting base named after Harold Holt?

Great video as always.

Commenting to support your work ! Continue !

A great report

Whatever danger might come from a wounded pootler , it's nothing compared to the danger of a victorious, unbridled pootler . No compromise.

Excellent analysis! I learned a lot!

Where do you usually go to for your info when researching? This geopolitical economic approach is very refreshing and inciteful. Do you have any go-to publications for this kind of angle on global issues?

Lets not forget that the most of the Australian and Chinese people want to enjoy life and then there are some organisations and politicians that want to battle each other.

The United States and Australia would be generally aligned based upon values and shared heritage alone. Australia gets the protection to not be a vassal state of China and the United States gets a staging area for our interests. Each side gets what they want. Being cynical and dismissing values and ideals doesn’t paint a complete picture of the world.

Always stay Informed

"Anything manipulable is rarely yours to keep" Great dating, advice, Caspian Report!

this Intro was awesome!

I thought Australia was one of the Islands being taken over with China with the excessive amount of financial influence

Excellent report. Thanks

Australia competes with China ? Shivan, what have you been smoking ? Must be pity good :DDD

That opening music was cold. Where can I find it?

Excellent tracking of not often mentioned actions of the Australian military done on altruistic pretext and followed by economic predation. Shows the post-WW2 European modus operati: endless power grabs masked under some flimsy pseudohumanitarian claptrap. Also. The very recent extension actions of the US in this underexamined theater were appreciated. This was one of the better and more original Caspian Reports.

One of a kind once again. Thanks for the approach and view regarding Timor-Leste.

Great video and great predictions! It makes the person think about what may happen eventually! It's alarming, somewhat!

Great Work! I’d love to see something about Brazil 🇧🇷

As a Kiwi Sāmoan, I want China AND America OUT of the pacific! We need a better international cooperative relationship than the Pacific Island Forum! We need to secure our own geopolitical sovereignty!

This is the best channel! Thank you

Good analysis of Australia and China’s “Cold War” in the Pacific Islands. Good discussion on the influence of realism and relations with the US in influencing Australian foreign policy.

Australia is not China, but Australia really needs to treat the various Pacific Islands, and especially the people, with more respect. They do not want to be perceived as arrogant overlords of vassal states, like is starting to be China. Australia is rich enough to give these small islands a bone or two. Also, the public perception of Australia is a hedge against island nation leaders whose secret bank accounts get a dramaticly large deposit.

Everyone keeps poking the US, Japan poked us once..

Been watching you for years don’t ever stop brother

Great video as always

Still wondering how Australia and China went from being ok with each other to antagonistic. All in a short span of time...

The pacific is so exotic to me

LMAO how long before we see the Fujian Aircraft carrier sail thru the Solomon sea or Coral sea for a "Freedom of Navigation" exercise.

Thank you an excellent review.

Thx for another great geopolitical vid! The TV show Pinegap went into some of the mentioned minefields, can recommend it.

Australia is but a launch pad for Uncle Sam

"rising sea levels" BAHAHA

PNG was shrewd in their dealing with Huawei. By playing the China card, it manage to pry open Canberra's purse strings when it's Pacific aid program where at it's lowest in decades.

I love your voice....

No worries, most of these islands will be mostly underwater in a few generations.

Hey Shirvan, sorry for asking how do you make your geopolitics videos. There so well accurate and precise. I'm trying to create my own geopolitics videos, I want to get your input.

Once again thank you!

US: Go fetch the ball Aus: ok daddy

*"In every chaos, there is an opportunity."* *USA🇺🇸 got this, during the two World Wars.*

Great information as usual.