From Aid Recipients to Speaking Subjects in Blue Pacific Sustainability Diplomacy

1. Introduction

Who is entitled to define what development cooperation should accomplish in the Pacific? Asking this question shifts attention from the number of offers available to island governments to the authority through which those offers are judged. A port, communications network, or climate programme can create connections while leaving the purposes and terms of cooperation externally determined. Conversely, a regional declaration may articulate a meaningful claim to authority without immediately changing investment decisions. Understanding sustainability diplomacy requires attention to both possibilities and to the evidence needed to distinguish them.

Pacific scholarship has long challenged representations of island societies as inherently small, isolated, or dependent. Hau‘ofa’s account of Oceania foregrounds relations across the sea rather than treating the ocean principally as separation [2]. Fry demonstrates that regional framing is itself a political practice through which competing projects of governance are advanced [3]. The literature on the new Pacific diplomacy likewise treats Pacific governments and regional organizations as participants in constructing diplomatic agendas [4]. The present article therefore does not claim to discover Pacific agency. It asks how a specific dimension of that agency can be identified in public documents without equating confident language with effective control.

This question matters for sustainability because the authority to define a problem shapes which interventions count as appropriate. Climate adaptation, ecological protection, transport access, and geopolitical security can be assembled into different accounts of regional need. The Boe Declaration places climate change at the centre of regional security [5]. The 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent articulates a regional vision connecting political leadership, human wellbeing, ecological stewardship, and connectivity [6]. These texts provide a basis for examining how Pacific institutions describe desirable futures and the relationships through which those futures should be pursued.

External strategies also contain environmental and developmental commitments. China’s 2017 maritime cooperation vision links the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to economic connections, marine protection, and cooperation [7]. The United States’ 2022 Pacific Partnership Strategy acknowledges Pacific climate concerns while locating engagement within wider American strategic interests [8]. Consequently, the analytical problem cannot be reduced to a developmental Pacific resisting an exclusively military external agenda. It concerns the organization of shared and competing priorities, the authority attached to regional institutions, and the conditions under which an apparent agreement on language becomes consequential.

The article addresses two research questions. First, how do selected Pacific regional documents construct an authoritative position from which to define sustainable cooperation? Second, what forms and limits of accommodation are observable when those positions are compared with external and jointly issued partnership texts? The research uses seven documents published between June 2017 and May 2025. It examines institutional representations rather than national foreign-policy behaviour, popular attitudes, or the effects of individual aid projects. Its temporal boundaries define a bounded set of diplomatic texts; they do not constitute a comprehensive account of subsequent regional developments.

The central argument is that discursive agency is visible in the formulation of criteria for legitimate partnership: which threats take priority, who can speak for the region, and what commitments cooperation should recognize. The strongest evidence in this corpus concerns articulation and selective textual accommodation. Evidence of implementation is outside its scope. The contribution is therefore an analytical distinction and a documented comparison, rather than a claim that island governments have reversed material dependence or compelled major powers to adopt their preferred policies. The following sections establish this distinction, explain the documentary method, present the comparison, and consider its implications for accountable sustainability partnerships.

2. Conceptual Framework

2.1. Regional Framing and the Authority to Speak

Framing concerns the selection and organization of meaning. Entman’s formulation directs attention to how communication makes some aspects of a situation salient through problem definitions, evaluations, causal interpretations, and proposed responses [9]. Applied to diplomacy, this perspective asks what a text makes cooperation about. Its use here does not entail a media-effects claim: the analysis examines the organization of official statements, not their influence on public opinion. A statement that foregrounds climate vulnerability and a statement that foregrounds strategic access can discuss the same territory while authorizing different priorities.

The geographical scale of that framing also matters. Agnew’s critique of the territorial assumptions embedded in international relations provides a reason to question analyses that take bounded state space as the only relevant political geography [10]. In Pacific scholarship, the oceanic perspective carries a more specific intellectual and political history [2]. It invites attention to mobility, relationships, and shared responsibilities that are poorly represented when islands are considered only as isolated landmasses. This article uses that insight to examine regional subject formation, without treating contemporary governmental statements as equivalent to the full social and cultural vision of Oceania.

The term speaking subject denotes an actor publicly represented as capable of stating collective purposes and evaluating proposed relationships. It is an analytical category, not a claim that Pacific actors were previously voiceless. Becoming visible as a speaking subject in a partnership text may involve recognition of a regional strategy, a jointly articulated priority, or an institutional role. These forms of recognition differ from merely appearing as a beneficiary. The relevant question is whether the represented actor helps define what counts as a suitable intervention, rather than only receiving an intervention whose criteria have already been fixed.

Regional voice is nevertheless constructed and contested. A collective statement can establish a usable diplomatic position while concealing disagreement over priorities or representation. Fry’s account of Pacific regionalism makes such struggles central rather than incidental [3]. The Forum also includes Australia and New Zealand alongside island members, so a simple division between an internally unified Pacific and entirely external powers misdescribes its institutional composition. Throughout the analysis, references to a Pacific position mean the position articulated in the specified document. They do not establish unanimous social consent or an identical preference among all governments.

2.2. Discursive Agency Under Unequal Power

Barnett and Duvall distinguish forms of power operating through direct interaction, institutions, social relations, and the production of subjects and meanings [11]. Their framework cautions against identifying power exclusively with the ability to compel another actor. It also cautions against assuming that a successful representation cancels other inequalities. Diplomatic recognition can coexist with financial dependence, uneven administrative capacity, or restrictive security arrangements. The present study therefore treats discursive agency as one dimension of political relations rather than a replacement for material analysis.

Schmidt’s account of discourse as the interactive conveyance of ideas helps connect policy content to the processes through which it is communicated [12]. For this study, however, publicly available final documents reveal only part of that interaction. They show authorized formulations, but generally do not disclose who proposed a sentence, what alternatives were rejected, or what bargaining preceded agreement. Discursive agency is consequently assessed through observable claims and their textual relations. Negotiating influence remains a separate empirical question requiring additional records or participant evidence.

Acharya’s work on norm localization demonstrates the importance of local actors’ reconstruction of external ideas [13]. The comparison here extends that question in a specific direction: how do partner texts acknowledge a regional agenda that already presents its own standards? This is not necessarily diffusion from a single source to passive recipients. Coexistence, selective incorporation, and strategic reinterpretation are all possible. A named reference to a Pacific strategy is thus more informative than generic language about mutual benefit, but it still does not reveal whether the partnership’s operational rules follow that strategy.

Three levels of evidence organize the analysis. Agenda articulation is observable when a regional text identifies priorities, responsibilities, or legitimate speakers. Textual accommodation is observable when an external or joint text explicitly acknowledges that agenda or a sufficiently specific related commitment. Implementation would require evidence that decisions, resources, procedures, or outcomes changed in accordance with the commitment. These are distinctions among evidentiary claims, not an inevitable sequence of progress. Implementation may occur without extensive diplomatic language, and repeated endorsement can occur without implementation.

2.3. Sustainability Partnerships and the Problem of Representation

Pacific climate diplomacy illustrates why collective voice cannot be understood simply as rhetoric. Carter examines how coalition participation helps Pacific states navigate climate negotiations and construct a more effective diplomatic presence [14]. Such scholarship establishes a substantive foundation for considering coordination and articulation as political work. The present article asks a narrower documentary question: how the purposes of cooperation become publicly specified. It does not use the visibility of a common position to infer how cohesive a coalition remained during negotiation.

There is also a distinction between governmental voice and inclusive governance. Penjueli’s discussion of civil society and regional legitimacy emphasizes the gap between public recognition of nongovernmental participation and effective opportunities to participate [15]. That distinction is directly relevant to sustainability partnerships. Recognition of a regional strategy cannot by itself demonstrate that affected communities, women’s organizations, or other constituencies can shape a funded programme. A theory of regional agency that overlooks this issue risks replacing an external simplification with an equally simplified account of internal consensus.

Recent research further discourages treating diplomatic formulas as reliable indicators of unrestricted choice. Powles examines tensions between inclusive foreign-policy positions and the obligations associated with bilateral security agreements [16]. Khan and colleagues discuss the opportunities and coordination problems associated with a more diverse development-cooperation environment through the Fiji–South Korea relationship [17]. Together, these studies support a distinction between the availability of multiple relationships and the capacity to govern their consequences. This article contributes to that discussion by specifying what official texts can establish about the terms of recognition before implementation is assessed.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Research Design and Corpus Boundaries

The study uses comparative qualitative document analysis. Documents are treated as situated institutional communications, rather than transparent accounts of motives or complete records of policy. Following the general methodological rationale for document analysis discussed by Bowen [18], the approach examines meaning in relation to authorship, purpose, and context. It is an interpretive comparison of a purposive corpus, not a systematic literature review, automated content analysis, or statistical sample of Pacific diplomacy.

Seven primary texts form the corpus. Three express Pacific regional positions: the Boe Declaration, the 2021 maritime-zones declaration [19], and the official online presentation of the 2050 Strategy. Two set out external strategic programmes: China’s maritime cooperation vision and the United States’ Pacific Partnership Strategy. Two jointly issued texts provide sites at which accommodation can be examined: the 2022 Declaration on U.S.–Pacific Partnership [20] and the 2025 China–Pacific foreign ministers’ joint statement [21]. Table 1 identifies the documents and the portions used. The academic literature provides conceptual context and is not counted as primary documentary data.

The selection follows an explicit analytical rationale. A document had to be available from an issuing institution, articulate regional priorities or a framework for cooperation, and permit comparison across the three relevant positions: regional agenda, external programme, and joint formulation. The corpus begins with the maritime BRI vision and ends with the 2025 joint statement because those texts bracket the selected comparison. It was assembled for this analysis from official English-language versions accessed on 20 September 2026. It is not exhaustive for the intervening years. The United States’ national strategy is analysed as a 2022 document, without assuming that every commitment remained operative under subsequent administrations.

The boundaries of D4 are particularly important. The analysis uses the Forum’s official online presentation of the strategy, not an asserted examination of every action in the downloadable strategy or implementation plan. National speeches, aid agreements, project evaluations, and confidential negotiations are outside the corpus. Nor does the corpus constitute separate case studies of Fiji, Samoa, and Solomon Islands. Joint texts differ in date, membership, and diplomatic setting; they are compared as instances of public formulation, not as matched measures of Chinese and American responsiveness.

3.2. Analytical Procedure and Interpretation Rules

The analysis proceeds through contextual reading, passage-level comparison, and examination of alternative interpretations. Each document is first located by issuing actor, date, genre, and scope. Relevant passages are then compared through five questions: who is authorized to speak; what problem is prioritized; what understanding of the region is invoked; what responsibility a partner assumes; and what qualification limits the commitment. A passage may answer several questions. The purpose is to retain the relation among actor, problem, and proposed response rather than count isolated words such as security or sustainability.

Table 2 specifies the interpretive rules. Appendix A provides an evidence register linking the principal comparisons to document locations and counter-readings. Explicit reference to an identified Pacific instrument is treated as firmer evidence of textual accommodation than a generic expression of support. A corresponding substantive position is considered separately, with no assumption that similar language has a single origin. Statements that a partner will support an agenda are reported as commitments, not completed actions. The analysis does not infer motive from the presence of a phrase or infer policy rejection from its absence in this limited corpus.

This is a qualitative interpretation supported by source locators. No independent double coding, intercoder reliability statistic, interview programme, or quantitative frequency analysis is claimed. The evidence register makes the grounds of interpretation available for scrutiny rather than presenting an unperformed validation exercise. Disconfirming material is considered within the selected documents, particularly environmental commitments in external strategies and external strategic preferences in joint texts. These observations test the adequacy of a simple opposition between Pacific priorities and external agendas.

4. Results

4.1. Climate Priority Establishes a Criterion for Evaluating Security

The Boe Declaration describes climate change as the “single greatest threat” to Pacific livelihoods, security, and wellbeing in clause i. Its broader security agenda also includes environmental and resource security, human security, and transnational concerns, while retaining sovereignty and noninterference [5]. The significance of the formulation lies in its ordering of priorities. Climate is not simply added to a list of possible cooperation activities; it provides a stated reference point for assessing the regional relevance of security initiatives.

This reading differs from an account of straightforward desecuritization. The declaration does not remove development and ecological concerns from security language. It broadens the relevant object of protection and gives climate a privileged position within that language. The distinction matters because describing the move as desecuritization would obscure the precise claim being made. Pacific institutions can contest a strategically narrow account of security by asserting an alternative account of what security must protect, while still recognizing other threats and forms of cooperation.

The United States’ 2022 strategy recognizes the climate crisis as the region’s leading security concern, explicitly refers to the Boe Declaration, and maps activities onto the 2050 Strategy. At the same time, its introduction identifies Chinese pressure and coercion as a concern, and its programme includes a stronger American security presence [8]. This combination provides evidence of coexistence within a single external text. Climate recognition has entered the programme, but the programme has not ceased to express the issuing government’s strategic objectives.

The joint U.S.–Pacific declaration describes climate action as a high-priority partnership issue and explicitly invokes Boe [20]. The documentary result is therefore stronger than a resemblance between unrelated statements: the regional instrument is identified. It is still weaker than proof that a negotiating intervention caused the wording or changed expenditure. The defensible inference is that a Pacific-defined priority forms part of the public justification for cooperation. This creates a potential standard of accountability, whose practical force would have to be examined through subsequent decisions.

4.2. Oceanic Regionalism Joins Identity to the Purposes of Connectivity

The online 2050 Strategy presents the Blue Pacific as a collective regional project and connects its vision to seven thematic areas. Its technology and connectivity theme emphasizes accessible and dependable connections alongside cultural and protective considerations. Its partnership commitments include respect and mutual accountability [6]. In this setting, connectivity is positioned within a wider account of how the region should develop. An infrastructure proposal can therefore be evaluated against purposes already articulated in a regional framework rather than being treated as beneficial solely because it adds a connection.

The analytical importance of this arrangement is institutional. Oceanic identity supplies a vocabulary of shared concern; a strategy makes that vocabulary available as a named reference in formal cooperation. These functions are related but not identical. Identity can provide a reason to act collectively without resolving every disagreement about how to act. A regional strategy can provide continuity across separate negotiations without eliminating the autonomy of member governments. The speaking subject represented in this material is thus a regional political project with procedures and aspirations, rather than an automatically unified community.

China’s 2017 vision already contains commitments to marine ecology, climate cooperation, and support relevant to small island states. It also describes an economic passage towards Oceania and the South Pacific and proposes transport, maritime, and communications connections [7]. This is significant counterevidence to any argument that environmental concerns entered external cooperation only through subsequent Pacific resistance. The comparison instead concerns how a pre-existing external programme can be related to an independently articulated regional agenda.

Clause 6 of the 2025 joint China–Pacific statement explicitly connects BRI cooperation with the 2050 Strategy and refers to national circumstances in setting priorities [21]. That reference documents recognition of a named regional framework. It does not establish which party originated the wording or show that any project’s design changed. The transition visible in the selected texts is from an external description of cooperation opportunities to a joint formulation that places those opportunities in relation to an identified Pacific strategy. Calling this textual accommodation preserves its significance without converting it into an unobserved policy outcome.

4.3. Maritime Claims Give Continuity a More Specific Diplomatic Form

The 2021 Forum declaration links climate-related sea-level rise to the preservation of maritime zones and associated rights. It asserts a collective position concerning zones established and notified under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, rather than merely requesting assistance with vulnerability [19]. The text matters here as an official diplomatic claim. This article does not adjudicate its legal status or treat it as proof that every relevant state or institution accepts the position.

The claim moves the discussion from exposure to a proposed rule for continuity. An account focused only on vulnerability can identify need while leaving the terms of response open. Specifying the rights that should persist makes the requested response more definite. Analytically, this is a different form of agency from asserting general deservingness: it supplies a proposition that another actor can recognize, qualify, or dispute. It also joins ecological change to the political and economic conditions of a continuing future, rather than presenting adaptation solely as a collection of technical projects.

Paragraph 6 of the 2022 U.S.–Pacific declaration supports maintaining maritime zones and related rights despite climate-related sea-level rise [20]. The relation to the Forum’s earlier position is substantively more specific than a general endorsement of resilience. However, a sequence of public texts still cannot reconstruct the negotiations behind them. The result is best described as correspondence between a prior regional claim and a later joint position. The degree to which Pacific diplomacy secured that correspondence remains a question for process evidence.

This example also clarifies what would count as a stronger future finding. Evidence that an authority changed a formal policy, that a legal position was invoked in a consequential proceeding, or that a relevant decision followed the declared principle would speak to implementation. None is inferred here. The distinction allows a documentary study to identify an important site of political meaning without presenting itself as an evaluation of legal effectiveness or realized development benefits.

4.4. Accommodation is Selective and Strategically Qualified

Neither joint formulation constitutes unqualified acceptance of an exclusively Pacific agenda. The U.S.–Pacific declaration combines regional and climate commitments with security cooperation and positions on the wider international order, including Russia’s war against Ukraine [20]. The China–Pacific statement combines respect for island-country autonomy with endorsement of China’s initiatives and a one-China position; it frames China’s climate assistance in terms of South–South cooperation and its capabilities [21]. These qualifications are part of the same texts that recognize Pacific priorities.

The comparison therefore supports an interpretation of overlapping agendas. A joint declaration can recognize a regional framework while simultaneously advancing the preferences of an external partner. Its existence demonstrates a publicly authorized formulation among its participants, not that one side has displaced the other. The participants also differ across the two statements. The China–Pacific meeting concerned countries maintaining diplomatic relations with China, and invited Forum representation does not make its statement identical to a declaration of the entire Forum [21]. Comparing the texts as though they measured the same regional constituency would overstate their equivalence.

Taken together, the findings support agenda articulation and selective textual accommodation across the corpus. They do not support an inference of comprehensive Pacific control over external cooperation. The strongest recurring pattern is that named regional positions become part of the language through which partnerships explain their legitimacy. The counter-pattern is that recognition remains compatible with strategic qualification, variable membership, and unspecified implementation. Both patterns are necessary to explain why discourse can matter without treating official endorsement as a sufficient measure of sustainability.

5. Discussion

5.1. Recognition is an Observable Achievement with an Uncertain Practical Reach

The comparison makes a limited but consequential contribution to the study of agency. An actor need not determine every outcome to participate in defining the criteria by which a relationship is publicly judged. When cooperation invokes a regional agenda, it recognizes a source of purposes beyond the partner’s own programme. That recognition can matter institutionally even when resources and capabilities remain unequal. The contribution of the analysis is to make this form of recognition observable while keeping its practical consequences open to investigation.

This argument is consistent with the established study of Pacific diplomatic initiative [3,4]. Its added value lies in separating three questions that can otherwise become compressed into a single claim of empowerment. Did regional institutions articulate a position? Did another authorized text acknowledge it? Did cooperation subsequently follow it? The selected documents answer the first two questions with different levels of specificity. They cannot answer the third. Maintaining the distinction improves both research design and the terms on which development partnerships are assessed.

Recognition also has a double possibility. It can give regional actors a public reference against which to question a partner’s conduct. Equally, a partner can incorporate familiar language while retaining substantial discretion over programmes. The corpus does not decide between these possibilities in operational terms. Instead, it identifies where the question becomes empirically tractable. A named commitment provides a more precise object for later inquiry than a broad assertion that diplomacy was either successful or merely symbolic.

Alternative explanations remain plausible. Shared wording may arise from ordinary diplomatic conventions, independently convergent environmental interests, the circulation of international policy language, or bargaining processes in which several actors contribute. Explicit attribution to Boe or the 2050 Strategy narrows the ambiguity about the recognized reference point. It does not establish a unique causal mechanism. The appropriate next step is therefore to trace a particular commitment through drafting, negotiation, decision, and implementation, rather than to treat the number of recognizable phrases as a proxy for influence.

5.2. From Connectivity Provision to the Governance of Connections

The original aid-recipient framing directs attention to who supplies an asset and who receives it. A sustainability perspective adds questions about who defines its purpose, who bears its costs, and who can contest its operation. These are questions about governing connections. They apply to physical infrastructure but also to institutional relationships linking governments, regional organizations, and communities. The present analysis examines the diplomatic level at which those relationships are described; it does not claim to assess specific infrastructure projects.

The distinction changes the relevant evaluation criteria. A project can increase transport or information access while remaining poorly connected to regional priorities. Conversely, a declaration can express those priorities while lacking procedures that connect them to project appraisal. An assessment concerned only with delivery can miss the politics of purpose; an assessment concerned only with recognition can miss the absence of practical authority. Research on sustainable cooperation needs to examine how the two are joined, with evidence appropriate to each.

Three practical questions follow as implications of the analysis, rather than as additional empirical findings. First, can a proposed activity be linked to a specific regional or national priority through a stated rationale? Second, is there an identifiable decision process through which relevant Pacific institutions and affected constituencies can challenge that rationale? Third, is there evidence through which those participants can assess whether the promised result was delivered? The answers would help distinguish an operational relationship to a regional strategy from ceremonial endorsement of it.

These questions do not prescribe a uniform Pacific position or assume that every collective priority should override national choices. Regional and national responsibilities can conflict, and different groups can reasonably evaluate the same project differently. Making those relationships explicit is part of accountable governance. A regional reference should create a reason to explain choices, not provide a substitute for explanation. This is particularly important where the political language of common purpose obscures uneven benefits or the concentration of decision-making authority.

5.3. Collective Agency and Internal Accountability

The speaking subject analysed here is institutional. Its voice should not be confused with the complete set of voices in Pacific societies. The distinction is not simply a methodological reservation added after the analysis; it affects the meaning of sustainability itself. A partnership may be responsive to governments while remaining difficult for local communities to influence. Equally, a regional institution may defend shared interests abroad while facing unresolved questions about participation within its own processes.

Penjueli’s discussion of the distance between recognizing civil society and providing effective participation offers a useful parallel [15]. External recognition of Pacific priorities and internal recognition of community voices pose related accountability questions, but neither guarantees the other. Treating national leaders as speaking subjects should therefore make it possible to ask who they represent and how that representation can be contested. It should not immunize their claims from scrutiny.

Nor should agency be defined as avoiding all obligations. Any consequential partnership can involve constraints, negotiated trade-offs, and unequal capabilities. Powles’s analysis of security agreements underscores the need to examine the obligations attached to diplomatic relationships [16]. The relevant question is how particular constraints are chosen, justified, and reviewed. Public documents can identify the reasons offered for a relationship, but evaluating the room for independent action requires the agreements and practices through which that relationship operates.

5.4. Limitations and a Research Agenda

The corpus is small, purposive, and institutionally concentrated. It permits close comparison of selected formulations but does not support claims about their prevalence across Pacific diplomacy. Its official English-language texts also privilege communications intended for regional or international circulation. Locally situated meanings, vernacular discourse, opposition voices, and informal diplomatic practices may differ. The study makes no claim to thematic saturation or representativeness beyond the documents identified in Table 1.

The asymmetry of genres and dates also matters. A strategy written by one government serves a different function from a declaration issued jointly with others. Changes between such documents may reflect genre, audience, and membership rather than a temporal increase in regional agency. The analysis uses these differences to identify sites of recognition; it does not score one partner as more responsive or infer a linear progression from dependence to autonomy. Nor does it treat the ending of the selected corpus in May 2025 as evidence that later developments are unimportant.

Further research can extend the comparison in three concrete ways. A negotiated-text study could compare drafts and interview participants to establish who introduced particular commitments. A policy study could follow one declared priority into budgets, project appraisal, or formal institutional decisions. A community-centred study could examine whether affected people recognize and can influence the priorities invoked in their name. Each would test a different part of the relationship between speaking, recognition, and implementation, rather than assuming that evidence at one level substitutes for another.

6. Conclusions

The selected documents show Pacific regional institutions articulating standards for legitimate cooperation through climate priority, oceanic regionalism, and specific claims about continuity. External and joint texts acknowledge parts of this agenda while retaining other strategic preferences and qualifications. The resulting pattern is selective textual accommodation. It establishes that Pacific purposes are present in the public justification of partnership; it does not establish comprehensive control over negotiations or implementation.

The article’s principal contribution is an evidence-sensitive account of discursive agency in sustainability diplomacy. A speaking subject is recognizable through the capacity publicly attributed to it to state purposes and evaluate relationships. This capacity can be politically meaningful under unequal material conditions, while remaining institutionally contested and practically incomplete. Evaluating its consequences requires moving from declared alignment to traceable decisions and outcomes. For Pacific cooperation, the question is therefore how the recognition of regional priorities becomes a relationship that Pacific institutions and affected communities can hold to account.

Appendix A.1. Climate Priority and Security

Locations: D2, clause i and clauses vi–vii; D5, printed pages 4, 6–7, and 10–11; D6, paragraph 3. Observation: climate priority is articulated regionally and expressly recognized in the American and joint formulations. Interpretation: this supplies a declared criterion for evaluating cooperation. Counter-reading: D5 also advances American strategic interests. Evidentiary limit: these texts do not establish drafting authorship, bargaining influence, or budgetary reprioritization.

Appendix A.2. Regional Authorship and Connectivity

Locations: D4, foreword, leaders’ commitments, and Technology and Connectivity thematic statement; D1, Sections III and IV, especially 4.1–4.2; D7, clause 6. Observation: a named regional strategy becomes a reference for cooperation. Interpretation: the source of stated purposes is more explicit than in generic partnership language. Counter-reading: ecological and developmental commitments are already present in D1. Evidentiary limit: no claim is made that Pacific actors first introduced environmental concerns into BRI policy.

Appendix A.3. Maritime Continuity

Locations: D3, operative statements following the preamble, particularly those addressing established and notified maritime zones and continuing rights; D6, paragraph 6. Observation: a regional position and a later joint position address a specific continuity claim. Interpretation: the comparison reveals substantive correspondence beyond a broad resilience formula. Counter-reading: publicly available final texts do not identify every contributor to the position. Evidentiary limit: neither universal legal acceptance nor implementation is established.

Appendix A.4. Qualifications and Overlapping Agendas

Locations: D5, printed pages 4–5 and 11–13; D6, paragraph 7; D7, opening participant description and clauses 4–5 and 9. Observation: recognition coexists with external strategic preferences and qualifications. Interpretation: accommodation is selective and compatible with other priorities. Counter-reading: the presence of external objectives does not by itself show that Pacific recognition is insincere or ineffectual. Evidentiary limit: the two joint texts are not matched samples for ranking partners.

Appendix A.5. Representation and the Unit of Inference

Locations: D2, preamble and sovereignty provisions; D4, foreword and leaders’ commitments; D6, signatory list; D7, opening participant description. Observation: each formulation has an identifiable institutional constituency. Interpretation: a collective diplomatic position is distinct from universal popular assent. Counter-reading: national variation does not make collective action impossible. Evidentiary limit: the study cannot infer public attitudes, Indigenous consent, or the preferences of nonparticipants from official statements.

Conference disclosure: An earlier version of this research was accepted and presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) conference under the title “From Aid Recipient to Speaking Subject: How Pacific Island Countries Reshape Connectivity amid the Competition between the Belt and Road Initiative and the ‘Indo-Pacific’ Strategy” [1]. This article develops a new, explicitly delimited documentary analysis and substantially extends the conceptual framework, evidence, and discussion.