Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton on Sunday accused China of paying bribes to clinch international deals, but declined to say corruption played a role in the controversial security pact recently signed between Beijing and the Solomon Islands.
“The Chinese don’t play by our rules,” Dutton told 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”.
“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: that’s 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.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister 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 it will “retaliate accordingly” if he did not keep that promise.