The United States opened an embassy in Tonga on Tuesday, reaffirming its commitment to strengthen ties with the Pacific island nation amid Beijing’s growing influence in the region.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the new embassy in Tonga would allow the United States to deploy more diplomatic staff and resources, including the potential appointment of a resident ambassador to Tonga.
“This opening symbolizes the renewal of our relationship and underlines the strength of our commitment to our bilateral relations, to the people of Tonga, and to our partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region,” Miller said in a statement.
The announcement came ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to Papua New Guinea later this month for talks with the Pacific nation’s leader—the first such visit by a sitting U.S. president in at least a century.
Biden will meet with Prime Minister James Marape and other Pacific Island Forum leaders to discuss “cooperation on challenges critical to the region and to the United States, such as combating climate change, protecting maritime resources, and advancing resilient and inclusive economic growth,” according to the White House.
The opening of the Tonga Embassy was first announced by Vice President Kamala Harris last year at the Pacific Islands Forum. Harris said the United States intends to open another embassy in Kiribati.
The White House said these actions will help advance the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to “strengthen the U.S.-Pacific Islands partnership and to support Pacific regionalism.”
The United States has sought to enhance its engagement in the Pacific region to counter Beijing’s increasing influence.
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said last year that Washington considers Tonga strategically important as it was “the key to who would rule the Pacific Ocean.”
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in Washington on Oct. 14, 2011. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Sherman said the United States and Tonga had fought alongside each other since World War II, some three decades before establishing formal relations.
“It is strategic today as well because, as you know, the People’s Republic of China wants to be here, they want to invest here,” Sherman said at an event with university students in Tonga last August.
“What they can’t do … is decide your future for you. We want to work with you, we want to partner with you, and we want to make sure you get to choose your own future and that neither we nor anybody else decides it for you,” she added.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Tonga in May last year and signed a tranche of bilateral agreements that would allow China to provide Tonga with a police laboratory and customs inspection equipment, disaster relief aid, blue economy cooperation, and a tomb improvement project.
The agreements came after Tonga, one of the Pacific’s poorest nations, signed up for Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2021. It also owes two-thirds of its external debt—worth $195 million—to China’s Export-Import Bank, its budget statement shows.
The Chinese regime signed multiple agreements with some Pacific Island nations last year, including a security pact with the Solomon Islands, allowing Beijing to dispatch police, troops, weapons, and naval ships to the country. The Solomon Islands occupies a strategic position in the Pacific and is less than 1,200 miles from Australia.
The Chinese Communist Party tried to have the region’s nations sign a sweeping security and economic deal in May 2022 but failed due to a lack of consensus among Pacific Island leaders.
Nina Nguyen, Victoria Kelly-Clark, and Reuters contributed to this report.
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