Pacific economies have limited capacity to absorb shocks such as the Iran war, leaving them at risk of a “lost decade” of development on top of earlier crises.

A growing share of regional support is shifting from grants to loans, led by Australia’s expanding infrastructure pipeline and the major multilateral banks. China, once the region’s largest lender, ...

Official development finance to the Pacific increased in 2024, ending three years of decline. The rise came predominantly from concessional loans, which offset falling year-on-year grants. Total ...

Loans from its mid-2010s lending boom are now entering acute repayment phases, leaving Tonga, Samoa, and Vanuatu with substantial debt obligations to Beijing. In 2024, Chinese aid spending in the ...

Pacific governments have more than doubled social protection spending over the past decade, from 0.9% to 2.3% of gross national income. External financing has ...

Pacific Island economies are among the world’s most energy insecure. Recent fuel-market volatility has underscored continued dependence on imported fossil ...

Aid to the Pacific is increasingly concentrated among a few major partners, with Australia by far the largest. The United States has cemented a long-term commitment to the three Compact states, ...

“Australians are inclined to wonder whether there is real understanding in the United States … of the requirements imposed upon America by its world leadership,” wrote historian Gordon Greenwood in ...

For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic subsided, North Korea has sent a delegation led by Kim Song-nam, director of the international department of the Workers’ Party of Korea, to Southeast ...

China is no longer just buying minerals. It is building control over the industrial system around them – refining, processing, logistics, and manufacturing that will underpin the green supply chains ...

A flagship for China’s much-vaunted Belt and Road Initiative, the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been underway for a decade. Signed by Pakistan’s then prime minister Nawaz ...

Elbridge Colby’s recent dismissal (Opens in new window) of a collective “middle powers strategy” has reignited a live debate about the future of US alliances and partnerships. Colby, the US Under ...