Wallis, J.Tubilewicz, C.2024-12-192024-12-192025European Journal of International Security, 2025; 10(2):271-2922057-56372057-5645https://hdl.handle.net/2440/143443Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2024Dominant debates about China’s growing presence in the Pacific Islands – through infrastructure, aid, trade, and investment – suggest that Chinese material power directly translates to influence and effective interference in Pacific states’ domestic and foreign affairs. These perspectives fail to clarify the causal link between Chinese economic statecraft and Pacific governments’ alignment with Beijing’s interests. They also deny Pacific people agency, overlooking how power relations are mediated by Pacific state and non-state actors operating across complex political and socio-economic structures. We challenge such rationalist conceptualisations of Chinese power by developing a constructivist taxonomy of power as presence (dormant capability), influence (socialisation), and interference (incentives), and applying it to the Melanesian subregion. We argue that Chinese power is not merely material, causal, and unidirectional. Chinese power can also (re)shape the identities and interests of Pacific elites and publics in a constitutive manner, potentially aligning their ideas about substantive norms, rules, and practices guiding their foreign relations with Chinese ‘core interests’ and perspectives on regional and global politics.en© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The British International Studies Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained prior to any commercial use.China; constructivism; influence; interference; Pacific Islands; powerJournal article10.1017/eis.2024.322024-11-07717271Wallis, J. [0000-0002-8767-917X]Tubilewicz, C. [0000-0002-3087-2788]