Experts say the project signals to the region that the US, Japan, India, and Australia can offer more than Beijing.
By Eugene Whong for RFA
A plan by the United States, Japan, India and Australia to collaboratively invest in port infrastructure in Fiji is a step towards challenging China’s hegemony over supply chains in the region while simultaneously signaling to Pacific island countries that the four regional powers can give them a better deal than Beijing can, experts told Radio Free Asia.
The plan was unveiled earlier this week in New Delhi, after a meeting of foreign ministers of member nations in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue alliance, or Quad.
Fiji was likely chosen because of its strategic location as a convergence point for many global shipping lanes, Gregory Brown, director of the Alliance Futures Initiative, a Washington-based think tank, told RFA.
“Fiji sits at the crossroads of the South Pacific and is the natural logistics hub for everything moving between Australia, New Zealand, and the wider island chain,” said Brown. “If you’re going to build one port that serves the whole Pacific, you build it where the shipping lanes converge—and that is Suva, the fulcrum for the region.”
According to a fact sheet published by the U.S. State Department, the Tuesday’s meeting focused on maritime and transnational security, economic prosperity and security, critical and emerging technology, and humanitarian assistance and emergency response.
“Following the Quad Ports of the Future Partnership conference hosted in India in October 2025, the Quad committed to identifying critical port projects that it can support to increase trade and economic prosperity by increasing port infrastructure and capacity for key Indo-Pacific corridors,” the fact sheet said.
“As such, we are proud to announce that the Quad countries will work with the Government of Fiji, to advance port infrastructure and associated activities in the country.”
The port project would be a major Western infrastructure project in a region that has seen increasing investments from China in recent years, as Beijing and the West jostle for geopolitical influence.
Avoiding “debt-traps”
Through the port project, the Quad hopes to send a message to Fiji and other Pacific island countries that there are alternatives to working closely with China.
In recent years, Beijing has been aggressively investing in Pacific island infrastructure as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.
The plan has been criticized as a “debt-trap”—partner countries borrow heavily to finance bridges, roads or seaports, but when they struggle to repay, China gains leverage and control.
Fiji owes roughly US$110 million to Chinese state banks, or about 6.5% of its external debt, according to its Ministry of Finance. While this figure is relatively small compared to other creditors like Japan (9.7%) the World Bank (36.3%) and the Asian Development Bank (38.7%), the nature of loans from the other major creditors are “highly concessional,” and have longer payback windows than the Chinese loans.
“China’s model in the Pacific is loans,” said Brown. “The debt becomes a strategic instrument.”
Brown noted that the Quad’s plan is to fund the Fiji port project primarily through grants, allowing Suva to avoid falling into a debt-trap.
“China lends, the Quad gives,” he said. “For a country the size of Fiji, that’s the entire calculation.”
China also provides grants to international partners, but only at a fraction of the United States. According to a March 2025 report by the Washington-based Brookings Institution, Chinese aid spending totaled about 14.6% of that of the United States between 2013-2018, and grants totaled 47.3% of this aid.
The report noted that grants are “traditional foreign aid projects in the Western definition” and said that it was a “common misperception” that China’s Belt and Road Initiative is aid.
Brown noted that Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka toured ports during a visit to China in 2024, and discussed potential partnerships with Beijing for port modernization.
“The Quad didn’t randomly choose Fiji,” he said. “This pitch is a direct counter-bid.”
He said that Fiji is the biggest, most visible island nation in the Pacific, and should the project be successful, it would send a message that “resonates across the region.”
“I think the whole point is to show the Pacific island countries that there’s a better deal available than Beijing’s,” said Brown.
First steps
Should the Quad’s port project in Fiji prove successful, the climate could be ripe for port upgrades in other parts of the region. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a press conference following the Quad meeting that the Fiji project would “serve as a model for other projects in the future.”
Port infrastructure in the Pacific is much needed, Cleo Pascal, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies research institute, told RFA.
“The choice of Fiji is a relatively easy first step – a location that is relatively high profile and dovetails with Australian and Indian priorities,” she said. “Ideally the next choice will be infrastructure in locations that make an even stronger statement, and difference, such as Bina Harbor in Solomon Islands.”
She also noted that the Pacific Island countries that still recognize Taiwan–Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu–would be ripe for cooperation with the Quad, because Chinese infrastructure projects in those countries would be problematic from Beijing’s point of view.
“I expect this is a pilot. If it works, we’ll replicate it,” said Brown. “The real question is whether the Quad can deliver this project on time and within budget.”
Though the port has been announced, construction will not start overnight, as Fiji has yet to agree to the project, Fiji’s foreign minister Sakiasi Ditoka said Wednesday to Indian news outlet The Hindu. Ditoka confirmed that Fiji was in discussions on port infrastructure with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, or MCC, a bilateral U.S. foreign aid agency.
expect this is a pilot. If it works, we’ll replicate it,” said Brown. “The real question is whether the Quad can deliver this project on time and within budget.”
Though the port has been announced, construction will not start overnight, as Fiji has yet to agree to the project, Fiji’s foreign minister Sakiasi Ditoka said Wednesday to Indian news outlet The Hindu. Ditoka confirmed that Fiji was in discussions on port infrastructure with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, or MCC, a bilateral U.S. foreign aid agency.
The U.S. State Dept announced in March that the MCC signed an agreement with Fiji for a $12 million grant “to support design and feasibility studies,” which Ditoka said were focused on ports and Fiji’s business regulatory environment.
When asked Tuesday about the port and an initiative on maritime surveillance discussed at the Quad meeting, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning restated China’s stance on the Quad that cooperation between countries should not target a third party, and that China opposes “forming exclusive groupings or engaging in bloc confrontation.”
Beyond the port and maritime surveillance, other projects unveiled at the meeting included a minerals investment framework, an initiative on energy security, and a promise to ensure that countries in the region are connected via undersea cables “by 2026.”
Brown believes these commitments indicate a “qualitative shift” away from talking about Pacific strategy to announcing “concrete deliverables.”
“The Pacific is where great power competition will be decided, and the Quad just acknowledged it,” Brown said. “That is, the US has limited resources and has to concentrate them where the strategic stakes are highest.”
He said the port is the Quad’s “belated recognition” that it needs to compete in the region.
“The Quad is essentially saying: we’re not going to let one country control the infrastructure through which strategic resources move,” he said.
Edited by Charlie Dharapak.
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