{"id":43225,"date":"2022-04-04T15:46:57","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T06:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/apr\/04\/australia-anxious-to-show-it-didnt-drop-the-ball-on-pacific-after-china-and-solomon-islands-deal"},"modified":"2022-04-04T15:46:57","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T06:46:57","slug":"australia-anxious-to-show-it-didnt-drop-the-ball-on-pacific-after-china-and-solomon-islands-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=43225","title":{"rendered":"Australia anxious to show it didn\u2019t \u2018drop the ball\u2019 on Pacific after China and Solomon Islands deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Canberra must walk a delicate line when responding to challenges presented by Beijing and Solomons\u2019 security agreement<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/ng-interactive\/2018\/may\/15\/the-guardian-app?CMP=cvau_sfl\">Get our free news app<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/guardian-australia-morning-mail\/2014\/jun\/24\/-sp-guardian-australias-morning-mail-subscribe-by-email?CMP=cvau_sfl\">get our morning email briefing<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/series\/australian-news-live\/latest\">Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As China makes progress on a security deal with Solomon Islands, the Australian government is anxious not to be seen to have \u201cdropped the ball\u201d in the Pacific region. That would be a tad embarrassing, given it has spent the past few years sounding the alarm about security threats from China while also trumpeting its own \u201cPacific Step-Up\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, has been one of the ministers on the defensive after leaked documents revealed the draft agreement between China and the Pacific island nation.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/apr\/04\/australia-anxious-to-show-it-didnt-drop-the-ball-on-pacific-after-china-and-solomon-islands-deal\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canberra must walk a delicate line when responding to challenges presented by Beijing and Solomons\u2019 security agreementGet our free news app; get our morning email briefingFollow our Australia news live blog for the latest updatesAs China makes progress&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2085,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,43,324,50,319,325,874,679,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-australia-news","category-australian-politics","category-china","category-foreign-policy","category-marise-payne","category-pacific-islands","category-peter-dutton","category-solomon-islands"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2085"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43226,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43225\/revisions\/43226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}