When I was younger and read in the Fiji Times of the USSR’s “five-year plans,” it conjured images of failures—bureaucratic rigidity, empty shelves, and a system that ultimately crumbled under its own weight. China has rewritten that script. What the Soviets got wrong—inflexible ideology, isolation from markets, and a disregard for efficiency—China has reimagined as something entirely different: strategic patience married to ruthless pragmatism.
China began investing in renewable energy in the early 1990s. They invited Western firms in, learned the technology, adapted it, and then dominated it. Twenty years ago, when the West congratulated itself on offshoring “dirty manufacturing,” China was quietly building the infrastructure that would make it the undisputed king of solar, wind, batteries and EVs.
China today, generates more clean energy than fossil fuels. It has added more power capacity in five years than the US has in its entire history. And it is on track to have half its energy from renewables.
This was not luck. This was a state that understood something the West has forgotten: energy security is the foundation of every other form of power.
What This Means for Fiji
We sit in the blue Pasifika, surrounded by renewable energy potential. The sun beats down on our islands with reliable intensity. The waves and currents never stop.
And yet, our debates are stuck.
We argue about possible waste-to-energy projects. We treat fossil fuel imports as a necessary evil while watching our foreign reserves drain precariously to pay for diesel shipped from halfway across the world.
Are we disadvantaging ourselves?
For the Pasifika, the answer is yes. We lack resources, and we lack strategic vision.
The American Warning: Policy Whiplash and Short-Term Thinking
The US is the richest country in the world. It has Silicon Valley, the world’s deepest capital markets, and a culture of innovation that has produced more technological breakthroughs than anywhere else.
And yet, the US is floundering on energy. The Biden administration’s serious attempt to reboot American clean energy, has seen 95% of its incentives rolled back. Utilities cannot meet demand. Electricity prices are spiking. And the country is pulling back from a sector China increasingly dominates.
Why? Because American energy policy changes with every election. A five-year plan in the US is a political fantasy. What China built over thirty years, the US cannot sustain for thirty months without partisan warfare.
Here is the hard truth for the Pasifika: we do not have the luxury of partisan debate that fails to address our core energy dilemma. We are small. We are vulnerable to global shocks. Every barrel of oil we import, is a bet against our own future. Every year we delay a coherent alternative energy strategy is a year lost to high fossil fuel costs.
What we can learn is the discipline of long-term thinking.
China’s bet on clean energy was not just about the environment. It was a real economic play. And it is now realising the benefits of that bet.
For Fiji, we can command our own destiny. Every megawatt of solar we install, every microgrid we build on a remote island, is not just a climate victory—it is a sovereignty victory. It is foreign exchange not sent to fossil fuel exporters. It is resilience against global price spikes. It is electricity that cannot be cut off by a cyclone taking out a shipping lane.
The real debate is whether there is political will to commit to a twenty-year alternative energy transition and actually stick to it. Not through one government. Not through two. But through a national consensus that transcends election cycles.
The Trust Deficit We Must Close
We have a trust deficit—between government and communities, between environmental advocates and economic development proponents, between those who want to move fast and those who fear being left behind.
We will not close that deficit with more debates about waste-to-energy alone. We will close it by articulating a vision that is honest about trade-offs, ambitious in its goals, and patient in its timeline.
China showed that five-year plans work when they are built on strategic vision and executed with consistency. The US shows what happens when policy lurches from one administration to the next. The choice is ours.
We in Fiji have something China and the US do not: an identity rooted in the ocean and a deep understanding that the long game is the only game that matters on a small island.
The question is whether we have the vision to rise above our partisan debates. Whether we can think strategically about energy alternatives. Whether we can say to our children that we saw the opportunity and took it—not because it was easy, but because it was necessary.
The sun is rising on a new energy era. Let us not waste the light.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 