Attempts from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to shutter the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have resulted in over USD 1 million (EUR 920,000) of funding being cut off to an Australian research organization that has heavily reported on China’s fishing ambitions.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institution (ASPI), a Canberra, Australia-based defense and strategic policy think tank, reportedly lost USD 1.2 million (USD 1.1 million) in USAID funding for research on China, according to the Wall Street Journal.
ASPI has published articles questioning the expansion of China’s fishing activities in the Pacific Islands – including critiques of a proposed USD 200 million (EUR 184 million) investment in a fishing port in Papua New Guinea – and the Antarctic.
Regarding the latter area, a November 2024 ASPI article, titled “China’s Fishy Behavior Demands a Rethink on Southern Ocean,” suggested China is blocking conservation measures at the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) in order to fish the Southern Ocean more freely.
“A new element of strategic competition is emerging in the Southern Ocean – in Australia’s backyard – in the form of Beijing’s push to control and exploit fisheries,” the article said. “The situation demands that we bolster capability while also cultivating consensus on the need to revise agreements to match the strategic realities of today.”
Bethany Allen, head of China investigations at ASPI, said the shutdown of USAID will hinder such investigations but should prompt other governments to support the work of nonprofits gathering research on China.
“Donald Trump’s foreign spending freeze has revealed how dependent these organizations are on a single government for their survival – and, by extension, how fragile our sources of information about China really are,” Allen said.
ASPI has been described as “an anti-China think tank” by Chinese state-controlled Xinhua news agency, which recently cited unattributed social media comments that suggested ASPI was paid by the U.S. State Department to fabricate material discrediting China.
Investigative outlets like ASPI losing funding is a big win for China, according to U.S. author and journalist Bill Bishop, who lived and worked from Beijing from 2005 and 2015 and produces a blog titled Sinocism which covers Chinese news.
“Gutting USAID funding for NGOs and other nonprofits working on China-related issues is a huge gift to Beijing, giving for nothing in return,” he said in a 12 March Sinocism blog post.
Besides benefiting from reduced investigations, USAID funding freezes also diminish U.S. global influence and, therefore, benefit China even further, according to Kevin Fitzsimmons, an aquaculture specialist and an environmental science professor at the University of Arizona who has consulted on USAID aquaculture projects in Myanmar, among other locations.
“USAID, Peace Corps, Farmer to Farmer volunteers, and more have supported hundreds of thousands of small businesses to start up and build free market economies that have raised the standard of living for millions around the world,” he said. “These kept potential migrants in their home countries and turned many into consumers of U.S. trucks, boats, and farm tools. I can guarantee that lack of U.S. investment will induce them to buy from China or the E.U. instead.”
