France declared a state of emergency in New Caledonia on Wednesday after days of deadly protests over an electoral reform that citizens looking to break off from French control say could squash the region’s growing independence movement. Per the 1998 Nouméa Accords, only indigenous and long-term residents have been allowed to vote in New Caledonia’s provincial and assembly elections. Legislation pushed this week in Paris would allow residents who have lived in New Caledonia for ten years to vote in elections, which would apply to the tens of thousands of people who have moved to the island in the past two decades. Given New Caledonia’s population of nearly 300,000, indigenous people are concerned that the reforms would significantly weaken the island’s pro-independence movement.
Rioters have shot at police officers and killed at least five, vehicles and shops are being burned and looted, and France is deploying more troops and shutting airports to quell the unrest. So far, more than 200 rioters have been arrested and more than 60 police officers injured. French president Emmanuel Macron also banned TikTok in the region over concerns that rioters used the platform to incite violence (a known phenomenon).
Macron, in trying to reason with the pro-independence Caledonians, has reminded them of the billion dollars France has poured into the island. There are other reasons why the French are keen to quell the island’s strong pro-independence contingent, which mainly consists of the Kanak population. NPR reported in 2021:
“France would not be the same without New Caledonia,” Macron told local dignitaries, RFI reported in 2018. He repeated a warning about a “new hegemony” in the region, seen as a reference to China, which has become more assertive and influential in the Pacific.
From military bases in the West Indies and Indian Ocean to research facilities in the Pacific that bolster France’s scientific and technology capacity, France’s ability to maintain overseas territories underpins its status as a European leader and position as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, says Fisher. Pacific assets give it “a place at the table of dealing with China,” as issues such as trade and security create mounting tensions between Beijing and Washington, she says.
Only in the last 20 years did France start to recognize New Caledonia’s strategic value, Macron has said. The island is one of the world’s largest producers of nickel (a resource crucial for lithium-ion batteries and renewables). As is the case with many other materials and mineral-refining capabilities, China has great control over the largest sources of nickel and has built some of the most advanced nickel-processing technology in the Indo-Pacific. China started to build Indonesia’s first high-pressure acid-leach plant in 2018, an environmentally dangerous but cheap breakthrough, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.S., as is the case with other minerals, is dependent on foreign nickel imports (the U.S. has identified a number of domestic nickel deposits dating back decades, but there is only one nickel mine, Eagle Mine in Michigan, which is set to be retired in 2025). China aided development and construction of Indonesia’s nickel supply chain with great speed and at little cost. Bloomberg reported in February:
Many of the world’s biggest nickel mines are facing an increasingly bleak future as they wake up to an existential threat: a near limitless supply of low-cost metal from Indonesia.
With roughly half of all nickel operations unprofitable at recent prices, the bosses of the largest mining companies last week sounded a warning that there was little prospect of a recovery.
Tim Treadgold at Forbes further explains China’s advantage:
The problem for nickel miners in countries such as Australia, Canada and on the French island of New Caledonia is that most of their nickel is expensive to produce and unable to compete with Indonesian nickel. The plot thickens because the Indonesian material is largely produced using Chinese developed technology and exported to China where it is absorbed in the world’s biggest battery and EV making business. Western world nickel miners have been crying foul. They say the Indonesian-Chinese nickel is dirty because it is mined after clearing forest on islands such as Sulawesi, while power for the processing come from burning coal.
New Caledonia’s economy is suffering, France’s efforts to rescue its nickel industry have been branded colonialist, and geopolitical instability gives China opportunity to further expand its Pacific presence. When asked if China, Russia, and Azerbaijan were interfering in New Caledonia, French interior minister Gérald Darmanin said, “This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality. I regret that some of the Caledonian independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan, that’s undeniable. It gives you an idea of what democracy is sometimes like if you listen to certain leaders.”