Plans to build a multi-use port on Manus Island have garnered concerns that China may seek to gain a strategic foothold in the Pacific Island.
With China’s high levels of foreign investment in the country, Australian defence experts worry co-financing this multi-million dollar project will catch PNG in a so-called ‘debt trap’.
Manus Island community leader Ron Knight said China is ‘breathing down the neck of PNG, like Sri Lanka’, where the government was forced to surrender a major port after it was unable to service it’s $1.1 billion debt.