The new Southwest Pacific campaign

“What gulag?” I said.

“The construction crew,” he said: the men in blue jumpsuits from China. Their barracks were straight out of a Russian novel, he said, puffing on a cigarette. Didn’t I know I was living smack in the middle of a huge story?

Politico

Meth, Vanilla and ‘Gulags’: How China Has Overtaken the South Pacific One Island at a Time

What’s happening in Tonga is a microcosm of China’s expanding global influence and why the United States is losing ground fast.

But underneath it all, the growing presence of the Chinese government in Tonga pumped tension into the life of the island nation that anyone could feel. This tension had started long before I arrived in 2014, the year the Chinese Communist Party’s brand-new leader Xi Jinping announced his “Asia-Pacific Dream” of cooperation and launched a tour of the South Pacific countries where he met with Tonga’s soon-to-be-crowned King Tupou VI. Xi came to power in 2013, when Tonga signed the deal with Beijing for construction of the St. George Palace that the men in the blue jumpsuits were now building.