New Caledonia key to France's diplomatic and military strategy

And for more, let's turn to France 24's Tom Kennedy, Tom Michael's visits. A reminder that France is a major player in the South Pacific. That's right. So in the dark brew area of of this map here, you can see France's military presence in this region. There's 1650 troops in this dark blue region and over there in the orange there's 1200. France also has a number of military attache stationed across the South Pacific. Permanent ones in Australia and Samoa, and where you can see these symbols of ships and jets. That's symbolic of French naval and air deployments last year. Major ones include mission the mission Gendark, which is this annual deployment of the French Navy, and Pegasus, which was France's largest Air Force deployments in the Indo Pacific. Francis also participated in a number of military exercises in the region in Australia. New Caledonia, French and French Polynesia with its allies. Those include the Equator drills organised by France and the Talisman Sabre drills organised by Australia and the US And France, of course, as you were mentioning there with the name dropping, Australia, the US, it's not the only player in the region, that's right. So these areas in white mark where France does retain territorial possessions, but as you rightly pointed out, despite Macron's ambitions for greater French influence in the region. This region, the Asia Pacific, has become this battleground for competition between on one hand China and on the other the US. So the importance of this competition was really brought to light in 2021 when Australia sort of went behind the back of France and signed this military deal with the US and the UK orcas. But if we look again at the map, you can see these Navy blue regions is regions and territories collectively linked to the US. While the red ones are linked to mainland China and the yellow to Taiwan so well analysis. While analysts say that China is not responsible for this current violence in New Caledonia, China does have close ties with the Cannock people, the indigenous people of New Caledonia. So if independence was to eventuate, it's likely that China would have their eye on New Caledonia with the ambition of adding to its territories of influence in the South Pacific. Many thanks, Tom Kennedy. We might borrow that map.