Converging anticipatory geographies in Oceania: The Belt and Road Initiative and Look North in Fiji

Abstract

Anticipatory geographies are state-driven initiatives promoting economic hope through the language of rejuvenation, prosperity and connectivity. As a discursive process, anticipatory geographies reconfigure spaces and identities. These narratives have proliferated in an age of intensified connectivity as states aim to imprint their political and economic visions. Oceania has become a site of multiple anticipatory geographies external and internal to the region with the presence of China as an enabling factor. In 2006, Fiji reintroduced a Look North policy to globalize economic connectivity placing Fijian agency at the centre, and in 2015, Beijing included Oceania into China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework. This work examines the processes when two anticipatory geographies meet. Adapting critical geopolitics, the research presents the findings of a critical discourse analysis of Chinese and Fijian texts referencing Look North and BRI. The work reveals the entanglement of anticipatory geographies in Fiji has generated a co-produced discourse of prosperity displaying continuity from Look North to the BRI. Although there is a shift toward defining the Sino-Fijian relationship through BRI, it does not signal an overwrite of an indigenous policy framework. I argue Look North has been ‘re-placed’ into the BRI to co-produce a narrative that permits the ongoing articulation of Fijian interests. With the Belt and Road becoming the defining framework for China's relations with countries across Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas, this work suggests Fiji's handling of BRI's impact on its domestic spaces and policies is an indicator of how other states will reposition their promises of economic hope to civil society.