Pacific Islands Forum fractures over China tensions as Kiribati boycotts leaders meeting

Leaders were gathering in Palau for the annual Pacific Islands Forum when the first sign of trouble arrived: Kiribati's President Taneti Maamau simply did not show up. No minister, no politician, no Secretary of Foreign Affairs—the roles that would normally fill such an absence. Instead, the country sent David Teaabo, its Director of the Foreign Service, a man who until May of this year had served as Kiribati's Ambassador to China.

It was a deliberate move, and everyone in the room would understand it. The Pacific Islands Forum is not a bureaucratic gathering. It is where the 18 member leaders—including those from New Zealand and Australia—retreat without officials present to have the conversations that matter: the difficult ones, the frank ones, the ones where relationships are built and common ground is found. A director of foreign service, no matter how capable, cannot replace a president in that space. The absence itself was a statement.

The fracture running through the forum is not new, but it has deepened. Months earlier, when China fired a test missile across the Pacific and then into it, the leaders had tried to issue a joint statement of protest. They could not. Nauru and Kiribati, both with close ties to Beijing, would not agree to it. The unity that should have been automatic simply dissolved.

Now the real pressure point has surfaced: Taiwan. Palau, one of only three Pacific nations that recognizes Taiwan, has invited it to attend the forum as a development partner. Palau's President Surangel Whipps Jr. has been direct about what he sees happening. China, he said in an interview, continues to threaten and pressure Palau over this choice, whether through what he called weaponizing tourism or direct attacks. "Nobody is going to tell us who our friends can be," he stated. The United States embassy in Palau has backed him up, posting on social media that it opposes China's attempts to use tourism as a tool of coercion. China has warned the forum's secretary general, Baron Waqa, that the organization should stick to a one-China policy. Clearly, that has not happened.

Beijing's response has been to praise Kiribati for constitutional amendments that enshrine its one-China position—moves designed to prevent future governments from ever establishing ties with Taiwan. The Global Times, understood as Beijing's official voice, ran an opinion piece celebrating Kiribati's move while condemning Palau for allowing Taiwan into the regional meeting.

This is not the first time Kiribati has fractured the forum. In 2022, it quit over the selection of the secretary general, feeling that small Micronesian island states like itself were being ignored. It took Fiji's Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka to bring it back into the fold in January 2023. Three years later, the pattern is repeating itself, and the wounds feel fresh.

The irony is sharp: whether geopolitics and the China-Taiwan question should or should not belong in a Pacific Islands Forum is almost beside the point. They are there now, whether anyone wanted them or not. The forum was supposed to focus on the region's own needs—climate, development, the survival of island nations themselves. Instead, it is becoming a stage for great power competition. Kiribati's absence, signaled through the sending of a former ambassador to China, makes clear that the organization's unity is fracturing along lines drawn by forces far beyond the Pacific. The meeting has not even begun, and already the damage is visible.