Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton on Sunday (April 24) accused China of paying bribes to secure international agreements, but refused to say that corruption had played a role in the controversial security pact. recently signed between Beijing and the Solomon Islands.
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“The Chinese don’t play by our rules“said Mr. Dutton on Sky News Australia. “If you look at what has happened in Africa there are corrupt payments that have been made»he continued. “We will never be able to compete with this kind of practice. We have values, we have the rule of law and we respect them.»
“China has changed”
“The reality is that China has changed», continued the minister. “China’s incredibly aggressive acts of foreign interference, its willingness to pay bribes to beat other countries to sign deals: this is the reality of modern China“.
Asked whether or not he thought China had done the same with the Solomon Islands, which last week announced a fuzzy security pact with Beijing, Mr Dutton declined to comment. This pact has revived the fears of Australia, a neighbor and ally of the archipelago, but also of the United States.
Canberra and Washington have long worried about the possibility of China building a naval base in the South Pacific allowing it to project its sea power far beyond its borders. The Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, Manasseh Sogavare, has repeatedly claimed that there will be no Chinese military base in his country, without convincing the United States which has warned that they “would respond accordinglyif he didn’t keep that promise.
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