After the eruption of the Tonga volcano, China's emergency assistance, but the West made a noise

Text/Walking Stuka

There has been a serious volcanic eruption in Tonga, and although there has been no news of serious casualties, the economic losses in Tonga have been very serious, and many infrastructures have been damaged. This is the worst natural disaster in Tonga's history. The international community also immediately launched rescue work in Tonga, of course, china is indispensable; however, some people in the West began to clamor for this matter.

According to a report by the CCTV news client on January 20, after the disaster, the Chinese government paid great attention to it, rushed to the rescue, and actively provided emergency humanitarian assistance to Tonga, interpreting the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind with practical actions.

China's active provision of aid reflects our humanitarian spirit and is something that normal countries should do; but western countries seem to be thinking about another thing: whether involving China in Tonga's post-disaster reconstruction efforts could lead to a further expansion of China's geopolitical influence.

Recently, there have been voices in the United States that have raised deeper questions about this eruption, such as: "Which country should participate in the reconstruction of Tonga?" What does this mean? British scholar Tom Foday recently published an opinion article pointing out that if humanitarian issues and needs are not considered, the premise of some countries' actions is that they do not want China to gain more influence in Tonga.

He noted that before the disaster, Tonga had seen China as a close partner, and China had invested millions of dollars in infrastructure in the region. Not everyone is happy, however, and Tonga was once described as "a somewhat sleepy backyard for Australia, New Zealand and the United States", a place that has long been taken for granted by Western hegemons but is now facing challenges.

Australia, in particular, has long adopted a hegemonic attitude toward Pacific island nations, an elitist view that extends from the colonial era and argues that they are defending themselves against the "yellow peril," but it is one of the main reasons why South Pacific island nations like China as a close partner.

As a result, the Response of the West to the Tonga disaster is far more political than it appears on the surface. Humanitarian assistance is a moral imperative, but beneath the surface, there are geopolitical interests in who rebuilds and assists these islands. The United States and its allies are concerned about the expansion of China's influence because aid to Tonga involves not only providing necessities such as food and water, but also providing economic assistance to rebuild infrastructure such as homes, roads, bridges, schools, and communications.

The United States fears that handing it all over to Beijing will damage their geopolitics. After China provided aid, New Zealand and Australia also provided aid, and the United States also provided aid to show its dominance in the backyard area.

So the authors point out that the real heat here lies not only in the damage caused by the volcano, but also at the heart of the geopolitical future; Tonga may not be an economically significant country, but its location on the map is important. The best outcome, of course, is that all parties are actively providing assistance that will ultimately help Tonga to return to normalcy and have a positive impact, and humanitarian assistance does not need to exclude either party.

How do you see this?

If the United States had always considered everything on the premise of geopolitical interests, it would have demonstrated its ability — in the past two years, Washington provoked so-called "vaccine diplomacy" and then lost out; to this day, we have not forgotten that the United States still owes us $100 million in aid.

Humanitarian aid should be for humanitarian purposes, we can do this, if the United States wants to help Tonga with the purpose of excluding China, it is better not to aid, shut up, flash to the side, and watch others do things well is the greatest accumulation.