Irene Sgambelluri was 10 years old on Dec. 8, 1941, when Japanese forces seized Guam while simultaneously striking Hawaii, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Sumatra to quickly conquer Southeast Asia and ignite a war that still scars scattered islands across the Pacific.
A native Chamorro, she recalls that day was the Feast of Santa Marian Kamalen, Guam’s patron saint, a festive occasion for the island’s large Catholic community.
“War ripped my family apart and took away every aspect of life I had known up until that point,” she said. Her father, a U.S. Navy pharmacist, was shipped to Japan as a slave-labor prisoner of war. “I never had a chance to say goodbye and I feared I would never see him again.”
While her father returned after the allies won the war nearly four years later, memories of the occupation remain “agonizing,” Ms. Sgambelluri said, but she felt compelled to testify before the panel so “history cannot repeat itself.”
“Japan attacked us because of our strategic and important location in the Pacific. With control of Guam, Japan could control the Pacific,” she said. “China sees the importance of Pacific islands as well. However, we will not let them have control over Guam and the Pacific region.”
“Like the empire of Japan did, the [China] aims to dominate the Pacific and Island people,” Indo-Pacific Task Force Chair Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) said. “We’re here today at a pivotal point in our nation’s history. Less than 2,000 miles away lays a threat to America and our allies. The People’s Republic of China, under the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), not only seeks to challenge American leadership, but it’s aggressively working to undermine the democratic values and institutions that we cherish,” using the official name of China under the control of the CCP.
‘Blue Continent’ Compacts
Leaders from three central and western Pacific U.S. territories, including Guam, and three freely associated states collectively representing 425,000 people living on more than 2,140 islands across 212 million miles of the “Blue Continent”—where more than $2 trillion in U.S. trade was generated in 2022—cited aggressive menacing by Chinese aircraft and ships, illegal fishing, cyber-attacks, and said CCP officials use bribery and anti-American propaganda to subvert governments and institutions.Del. Aumua Amata Radewagen (R-American Samoa), a non-voting congressional representative, said the territories and freely associated states “form the western-most of America’s homelands at the doorstep of Asia” and the “architecture of the what, since 1945, has been mostly a free and open Pacific,” an “integrated superstructure of regional security and peace” that must be reinforced.
The near-three hour Congressional hearing, the first on Guam in 15 years, started about 10:10 a.m. Aug. 24 at the Hilton Hotel on Tumon Bay. It was still in its first hour when eight Republican presidential candidates took the stage for their 8 p.m. Aug. 23 debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 7,318 miles east and seven time zones, 15 clock hours “behind” Guam, “Where America’s Day Begins.”
The hearing was one of several the task force plans in August across the Pacific and comes as the Biden administration negotiates renewals of 20-year ‘Compacts of Free Association’ (COFA) with the three independent island nations and promotes its “Pacific Partnership Strategy,” which calls for “renewed U.S. engagement across the full Pacific Islands region” to counter China’s “efforts at democratic erosion.”
The administration submitted its proposed compacts to Congress in June after years of often difficult deliberations with the three island nations—the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI), and the Republic of Palau.
The Biden administration’s proposed compact earmarks $7.1 billion in economic assistance over a 20-year span for the three nations with $3.3 billion earmarked for FSM, a $1.2 billion increase from the 2003 US-FSM COFA, and $2.3 billion for RMI, a $1.3 billion increase from the 2003 US-RMI COFA.
The plan also includes $634 million for the U.S. Postal Services to provide services to FSM and RMI.
‘Political Warfare’
According to a 13-page brief (pdf) written by Indo-Pacific Task Force analysts Ken Degenfelder, Justin Rhee, and Howard Hills, China has been expanding its influence across the region for more than a decade as part of its Belt and Road Initiative “to invest in more than 150 countries and international organizations, and expand CCP influence.”Standard tactics include economic aid and infrastructure development proposals “leveraged to affect political outcomes and perceptions of the U.S. while waging ‘political warfare’ to gain undue influence and/or destabilize island nations,” they write.
The CCP has been successful, the task force analysis maintains, not only in using “offerings of economic aid and infrastructure development” to seduce government and business leaders but to become “an important market for [island economies] when it comes to natural resource exports and tourism,” an industry it artificially boosted and is now using as leverage against the island nations and U.S. territories.
The way in which China is “undermining strategic and economic interests in the area is by trying to reshape narratives, even to retell history to align with their own diplomatic and economic interests,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) said, which is why Ms. Sgambelluri’s horrific recount is “important testimony” reaffirming a “painful history” that warns “we know what happens if we let democracy slip away.”
When resisted, the CCP has resorted to bribery, “political warfare,” and other “malign tactics ... that aggressively threaten the political stability” of the freely associated states, the analysis states, before warning, “U.S. territories are not immune from being targeted” by China.
Indeed, agreed Ms. Leon Guerrero, Guam’s first-term governor and former Bank of Guam president/CEO, the CCP “has shown a commitment to its goals” to “increase its popularity in the Pacific region and gain support for pro-Chinese policies at the United Nations.”
Key to that overall goal, she said, is promoting the CCP’s “China-Pacific Island Countries Common Development Vision” and the “China-Pacific Island Countries Five-Year Action Plan on Common Development (2022-26).”
“Knowing that,” Ms. Leon Guerrero asked, “who should write the rules of U.S. trade in the Indo-Pacific? If we choose not to, China surely will. This is why I support the bipartisan effort to increase U.S. engagement throughout the region and invest in the security of Guam and other vital U.S. territories. It is why I join other island leaders in seeking economic and infrastructure support for the Pacific’s developing democracies.”
Guam Under the Gun
The largest, most populous, and southernmost of the Mariana Archipelago island chain, 212-square-mile Guam has been part of the United States since the Spanish-American War at the dawn of the 20th century and is governed as a U.S. territory under the 1950 Organic Act of Guam.Along with the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI) and American Samoa, it is one of three Pacific U.S. territories that have evolved since World War 2 into an important military nexus, critical trade corridor, and key source for raw materials and minerals with vibrant tourism and sports-fishing industries that draw visitors primarily from Japan, South Korea, Europe, Australia, Canada, and China.
Guam’s 170,000 residents, many of native Chamorro heritage, know—as they did with the Japanese 82 years ago—Guam is a bastion of American military might and, thus, a prime target.
The island would be a genesis of any U.S. response to a Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan. It houses the Air Force’s 36th Air Wing at Andersen Air Force Base, Naval Base Guam—an attack submarine hub—a naval air station, a naval ship-repair yard, communication centers, a military hospital, Coast Guard stations, Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz soon to be manned by 5,000 Marines, and Barrigada Readiness Center, home of the Guam National Guard.
Collectively, the Department of Defense (DOD) controls nearly 98 square miles, or 46 percent, of the island, with 22,000, including dependents, living on its military installations.
The DOD is spending more than $600 billion in the coming decades to expand the island’s airfields, port, and U.S. Marine base, including $160 billion in a multi-year missile defense upgrade in the proposed Fiscal Year 2024 defense budget.
Guam is within range of some Chinese ballistic and nuclear-capable missile systems, including the DF-21 ballistic missile, which Chinese media have dubbed the “Guam killer.”
The Chinese are happy to let Guamanians know what’s in store should there be hostilities, portraying a Chinese Air Force H-6 bomber launching missiles at Andersen Air Force Base in a 2020 video.
The U.S. National Security Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the FBI have documented repeated cyber-attacks and intrusions with a Chinese “state-sponsored cyber actor” called “Volt Typhoon” apparently conducting espionage and information-gathering operations against Guam.
In May, the intelligence agencies reported that “Volt Typhoon” used “built-in network administration tools” to evade detection and restrict default logging configurations in an event that stymied internet reception and transactions on the island.
Ms. Leon Guerrero said it appears “Volt Typhoon” has not engaged in detected similar activity since, and it remains unclear what the fallout from the May incursion could be, but she said the damage inflicted about that same time by Typhoon Mawar offers an example of what could happen if the CCP launches a full-scale cyber or electromagnetic attack against the island.
“During the typhoon, we witnessed and experienced a shutdown of communications. Our radio stations were not on, our telecommunications were not on, we had no means of communicating with each other,” she recalled. “That was a feeling of paralysis for me. So, we very much experienced what I think could happen if there is a big Chinese cybersecurity attack. Can you imagine if all power at our airport or at our port authority is paralyzed because of those attacks? We will not be able to survive.”
The experience spurred her office and the territorial Legislature to create “a cybersecurity island-wide emergency plan. We have directed our government agencies specifically to establish their cybersecurity plan working with very key stakeholders in business and public sectors.”
In addition to overt threats of eyeblink annihilation, Guam House Vice Speaker Rep. Tina Rose Muña Barnes (D-Hagåtña), the longest-serving member of the territorial legislature “and a daughter of Guam,” said she has “witnessed the rise of China’s ‘soft power diplomacy’” on the island and among her “brothers and sisters across the ‘Blue Continent.’”
“From airports to critical infrastructure, to government landmarks, and people-to-people exchanges, China has made it a point to make known their presence, open checkbooks, and influence, right here in our backyard,” she said, recalling as a territorial lawmaker, she’s been approached by CCP officials lobbying her to repudiate U.S. policy.
“Not too long ago, I did receive a call from the ambassador of China saying that I should advocate for a ‘One China Plan’ and I said, ‘That’s way above my pay grade,'” Ms. Barnes said. “‘It’s just not right,’ I told him. ‘We are Americans and we are here peacefully. If this is a threat, then I think that you’ve really asked something way above my pay grade.’
“But in all fairness,” she added, “as you see, [CCP coercion] is coming here and you see what’s happening with what they can do without the support from ‘Uncle Sam.’”
He recalled that in 2013, North Korean President Kim Jung Un threatened Guam with nuclear missiles. The Pentagon acknowledged there was little it could do but dispatch Aegis-equipped warships to the area.
Despite that exposed vulnerability, a THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Air Defense) system was not installed on Guam until 2017 and only now, in the proposed FY24 defense budget, are there plans to bring Patriot batteries and other anti-missile technologies to the island, Ret. Brig. Gen. Leon Guerrero said.
“The question brought forth to this committee is, will the U.S. be reactive” to Chinese encroachment now or years later? he asked, as it did in bringing THAAD to Guam four years after the 2013 missile crisis concluded, “with North Korea deciding when to end the threat.”
Or, he continued, “will the United States take proactive measures to protect its citizens here in Guam against possible future armed conflict?”
Commonwealth of Bribes
CNMI is a U.S. territory of about 50,000 American “nationals but not citizens” spanning 14 volcanic, mountainous islands, and coral reefs about 100 miles north of Guam.The commonwealth’s most prominent islands are Saipan, Guguan, Tinian, and Rota, names that resonate in U.S. history and affirm, “Our relationship with the United States was forged in war, in the bloody battles of World War 2, and refined in peace,” CNMI Gov. Arnold Palacios testified (pdf).
“In the Marianas, we are Americans. We are also Micronesians,” he said. “The United States is more than a nation with borders on the North American continent. It is also a Pacific nation, and on U.S. soil everywhere in the Pacific, we experience CCP aggression on multiple fronts.“We see it in massive investments in infrastructure and economic development. We see it in land grabs and fisheries expansions. We see it in unauthorized research vessels and divers lurking around our undersea fiber optic cables. We see it in organized crime, public corruption, and political interference.
“There is a strategic edge in all of these CCP’s activities,” Mr. Palacios continued, “and it destabilizes island communities and cuts against America’s influence and security in the region.”
The Northern Marianas are “acutely vulnerable” because the area’s post-pandemic economy “continues to struggle” and CNMI’s “government remains in deep fiscal distress,” he said.
“There are signs seemingly everywhere of ‘friendship projects’ sponsored by the [Chinese] in the islands. The CCP moves both quickly and methodically to fill perceived voids in American assistance and to capitalize on the social and economic vulnerabilities of Pacific Island communities,” Mr. Palacios said.
He said between the 1980s through the early 2000s, more than 30 garment factories, predominantly Chinese-owned, set up on 47-square mile Saipan. “Tens of thousands of people were brought in,” he said, adding that many were brought in from China to work in the factories.
Those Chinese-owned factories began to close in 2005 when new trade rules stripped CNMI of “competitive advantages it had through tariff-free and quota-free access to U.S. markets,” Mr. Palacios said.
As this was unfolding, Chinese interests began to push tourism with CNMI officials and businesses were gladly “capitalizing on the commonwealth’s approved destination status with China and special visa-free access to Chinese tourists,” he said.
Under proposals from Chinese investors, “We turned to gambling, legalizing casino gaming on Saipan even after the venture previously failed on Tinian. An exclusive license was, nevertheless, awarded to a Chinese casino operation,” Mr. Palacios said.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese tourists comprised approximately 40 percent of all Northern Marianas visitors with the Chinese Saipan casino raking in billions, he said.
“For a brief period, Chinese tourism and gambling revenues unsustainably propped up the commonwealth’s government and economy,” Mr. Palacios said. “But this short-lived recovery was fraught with controversy, from human trafficking to ‘birth tourism,’ labor abuse, money laundering, and public corruption.”
Since the pandemic, China’s economy has staggered and the stream of Chinese tourists “has all but dried up; the Saipan casino has closed,” he said. “The commonwealth was fortunate to have received over $1 billion in [U.S.] federal assistance during the pandemic years to shore up our economy and sustain essential public services. This aid was a lifeline.”
Reelected in a November 2022 runoff to a second term as governor, Mr. Palacios, an independent, said over his first four years the territory’s policy has been to “pivot away from over-reliance on Chinese investment, and seek to strengthen our relationships with our [U.S.] federal partners and allies in the region. I worried about the instability of the Chinese markets in light of shifting geopolitical currents. I also worried about the commonwealth’s potential exposure to national security concerns.”
He said there is resistance to the “pivot away” from China. “Not everyone was pleased with this position. We are taking the hits for it, both economically and politically,” he said. “To this day, certain influential business interests in the community continue to ask me, as well as members of the commonwealth Legislature, to open up to Chinese investment once again.
“That same kind of pressure,” Mr. Palacios continued, “ripples across the Pacific in various ways—to sell fishing rights or accept Chinese investment in public infrastructure, for example, or enter partnerships with [Chinese] law enforcement, or lower visa requirements for Chinese tourists and workers. Whatever form this pressure takes, it is always erosive to America’s influence and security in the region.”
Del. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (D-Northern Marianas Islands), the islands’ non-voting Congressional representative, felt compelled to announce he was taking a stand.
“Look, some of you know me well enough to know that I inquired about the Northern Marianas’ relationship with the People’s Republic of China. I’ve been quiet about that for a while,” Mr. Sablan said, noting there “seems to be … concern” about his silence but his presence proves he’s “actually taken a stand and said, ‘Look, I will join this task force and work on my condition that my brothers and sisters are fairly treated.'”
Asked by Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) if CNMI officials take bribes from the CCP and other Chinese entities, Mr. Palacio replied, “On a daily basis.”
Bribery “is not something that happens periodically. It happens every day and it happens at different levels,” he said. “That happens at the federal level, at the state levels, and with our Legislature. Our executive officials are approached almost every day. So, it is something that we have to be mindful of and address as part of the routine order of business every day. We see those hooks being dangled every day. As I’ve stated, you know, a lot of our economies are driven by Chinese investments.”
The scenario is similar on the third U.S. territory, American Samoa, a seven-island chain of 45,000 residents in the South Pacific’s Polynesia.
Ms. Radewagen, whose father was a former American Samoa governor and Cold War diplomat under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, said the islands have resisted communism before and will do so again.
“I understand, in a very profound way, how and why the U.N. trusteeship, our ‘Compact of Free Association’ stood for decades against Soviet imperialism as a threat to democracy and post-colonial free enterprise and rule of law,” she said.
“Now we’re facing the threat of the once-concealed, but now overt, velvet-gloved hand of [Chinese] ambitions that hides the iron fist of the CCP, of totalitarian communist imperialism. Thus, we come here … to regroup and confront together the [Chinese] threat to the freedom of the ‘Blue Continent.’”
Islands in the CCP Seam
The three western Pacific “freely associated states” the U.S. maintains COFA pacts with are strategic allies—the agreements deny area access to Pentagon-decreed adversaries—but the islands’ economies, as with those of U.S. territories, also face daunting challenges that leave them vulnerable to CCP overtures.According to the Indo-Pacific Task Force, the Federated States of Micronesia (FMS) appears most CCP-influenced. The FSM spans more than 600 islands between the Marshall Islands and Palau with about 115,000 residents in a federal constitutional system.
China “is a major provider of economic assistance and investment, worth roughly $40 million between 2009–18” and has a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with the FSM, according to the task force.
In addition, at least 25 Chinese entities have financed and constructed FSM government buildings, a sports facility, a bridge, and other infrastructure projects, such as upgrading Chuuk International Airport, according to the analysis.
A March 2023 letter by outgoing FSM President David Panuelo cited increasing Chinese influence within his country and successful use of “political warfare,” alledging FSM’s government is “bribed to be complicit, and bribed to be silent.”
While this is happening, the U.S. Air Force is expanding its “Agile Combat Employment operations” within its FSM military reservation.
“Palau continues to be subjected to China’s substantial economic ‘carrots and sticks’ to shift Palau’s alliances,” he said.
Tourism is Palau’s largest industry, Mr. Udui said. During impasses in COFA talks, “China quickly ramped-up tourist visits from a handful to 160,000 a year. It bought hotel rooms far in advance, crowding out visitors from other nations. Then it said it would cut off the flow if we did not shift” its demands in COFA negotiations and adopt a “One China Policy.”
“We didn’t, and it carried through on its threat,” he said. “Just before COVID, China offered to send as many tourists as we could accommodate and establish a huge new industry in Palau, but again only if we shift alliances.”
The COVID-19 pandemic then “hit right after the Chinese body blow to our economy. The combination shrank the economy 30 percent in just five years, causing real pain for our people and eliminating budget surpluses,” he said, noting, “Palau then became the only U.S.-affiliated jurisdiction to not receive COVID revenue-loss grants” because the CCP ensured there was no revenue to lose.
“Tourism is coming back, but more slowly than … projected,” Mr. Udui said. “Meanwhile, most of the private sector investment in Palau is from China. Palau is only five hours away from Beijing. Some of our people, including some of our most important leaders, are tempted by Chinese offers. They see China as the best opportunity for the private sector growth we want.”
Chinese fishing fleets with factory trawlers that sweep the ocean of all sea life have forced Palau to close its waters to fishing, destroying its domestic fishing industry and world-renown sports fishery, he said.
This puts Texas-sized Palau—less than 20,000 people living across a 300-island swath—in a difficult place, Mr. Udui said, noting the United States is now installing its closest-to-Asia earliest-warning radars and extending a military runway in Palau, where it is also considering other air and seaport installations.
“We are committed to having the facilities that the U.S. military needs in Palau, but the runway on the island of Peleliu and the radars, one of which is on the island of Angaur, have caused concern in Palau, and there may have been a Chinese effort to derail the Angaur radar,” he said, noting when plans for the Angaur radar were announced, “There was opposition asserting there were already plans for a Chinese hotel and casino next door, a much more attractive development for the community.”
Asked by Mr. Tiffany if bribery is an issue in Palau, Mr. Udui replied, “I think I would say that there are clear influences towards our government officials in the form of trips or invitations for trips, or sponsored trips to Beijing, for instance, and to dinners and some of these, even in-country, where we later found out the connections to organized crime, or to the CCP, with the help of U.S. officials to identify these individuals.”
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) said President Whipps has publicly chafed about “numerous occasions where Chinese ships violate Palau’s exclusive economic zones, or EEZ. Some of these violations are Chinese surveying activities. In one recent incident, a Chinese vessel conducted questionable maneuvers over your undersea fiber optic cables.
“When it comes to the surveying,” she concluded with a question, “Does Palau have mineral or energy potential off its waters that China may desire?”
“We believe there are undersea minerals that would be of value economically” in Palau’s waters, and that Chinese “researchers” are “surveying our [fiber optics] cable. That is very evident from the tracking that we see and the requests they officially make to enter our waters. But the vessels we see are not made for research. They’re made for other purposes. We also see they are taking steps to name ridges in our waters, we suspect for a future claim to take possession of some of our northern waters.”
Mr. Udui said the vulnerability of those cables surfaced recently during “a week’s worth of interference” that mysteriously hampered connectivity “and we were unable to restore full service using satellite backup.”
CCP Wants the Kwajalein Atoll
Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Jack Ading testified (pdf) that the sprawling freely associated state, which encompasses 1,225 islands and 42,000 residents across an area as large as Alaska, California, and Florida combined, said CCP pressure poses a direct threat to regional and U.S. homeland security.Within the RMI, the United States has an army garrison on Kwajalein Atoll that includes the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, which supports U.S. missile and missile-defense testing, space launch, and space surveillance activities.
Speaking on behalf of President David Kabua, “who looks forward to meeting with you in a few days,” Mr. Ading said the CCP also artificially boosted and then tried to deflate RMI’s tourist economy while targeting its second-largest revenue generator to convince officials to end relations with the United States and disassociate from other Pacific island nations.
“Regarding Chinese efforts to get the RMI to shift its alliances, one example relates to the second-largest portion of our private sector and a major contribution to the RMI’s economy and budgets, this is RMI being one of the three largest ship registries in the world. China charges vessels flying our flag significantly more to dock at its ports than it charges the other two,” he said.
Mr. Ading said RMI is resisting CCP pressure and hoping to solidify its relationship with the United States in the proposed compact now before Congress.
Mr. Westerman said he learned much from the hearing’s testimony by territorial and freely associated state officials who appear to be calling for the United States to expand its footprint to stave off CCP adventurism.
“Congress has a responsibility to meet this challenge head-on and to protect our shared American interest,” he said. “It is for this very reason that the members of this Congressional delegation are here today—to spotlight [China’s] malignant activity in the U.S. territories and the freely associated states and examine how the U.S. will stand united against the threats, both on the continental part of our country and with our partners in the Pacific.”
“As a beacon for democracy and a strategically important counter to Beijing, the U.S. needs to increase its support of our Pacific Island territories and our treaty partners,” Mr. Lamborn agreed.
Ms. Barnes said the people of the Pacific, the “brothers and sisters of the ‘Blue Continent,’” have stood for freedom against foes for millennia and that is why they have aligned with the United States and consider themselves Americans.
