top of page

By:

Sumant Vidwans

29 August 2024 at 10:09:28 am

The Rising Tide: China’s Tightening Grip on Solomon Islands

China’s quiet rise in Oceania is reshaping Pacific geopolitics, and the Solomon Islands now sit at the centre of this strategic contest. While the South China Sea dominates debate over China’s maritime expansion, China’s quieter but significant rise in Oceania is generating growing geopolitical and security concerns. The Solomon Islands exemplify this shift, emerging as a key arena of competition between China and traditional Western allies. Beijing’s push for deeper security and economic...

The Rising Tide: China’s Tightening Grip on Solomon Islands

China’s quiet rise in Oceania is reshaping Pacific geopolitics, and the Solomon Islands now sit at the centre of this strategic contest. While the South China Sea dominates debate over China’s maritime expansion, China’s quieter but significant rise in Oceania is generating growing geopolitical and security concerns. The Solomon Islands exemplify this shift, emerging as a key arena of competition between China and traditional Western allies. Beijing’s push for deeper security and economic ties signals a strategic move into a region long shaped by Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The Solomon Islands is an archipelago nation in Oceania, northeast of Australia. It consists of six main islands and over a thousand smaller ones, covering about 29,000 sq km and home to roughly 700,000 people. Honiara, the capital and largest city, sits on the island of Guadalcanal. Modern Solomon Islands history began in 1893, when Captain Herbert Gibson declared a British protectorate. The islands later became a major World War II battleground, seeing fierce clashes between the US, Britain, and Japan. In 1975, the territory was renamed “The Solomon Islands”, gaining self-governance the following year. It became fully independent in 1978 as the Solomon Islands”. The country remains a constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth, with the British monarch as head of state, represented by a governor-general. China’s growing influence After gaining independence in 1978, the Solomon Islands established ties with Taiwan in 1983 and maintained them for 36 years. Taiwan provided extensive aid in infrastructure, education, and healthcare. But as China’s influence expanded, the Solomons eventually shifted under pressure from Beijing’s One-China policy, which requires countries to recognise only the PRC and reject Taiwan’s claim to statehood. In 2019, the Solomon Islands cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognised China, aligning with a broader regional shift in the Pacific. Soon after, the Solomons signed an MoU with China, joining the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Launched in 2013, the BRI is a vast global infrastructure and economic project aimed at boosting trade and connectivity across Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Solomon Islands’ economy depends largely on agriculture, fishing, and forestry, with little industrialisation. Its BRI partnership with China prioritises infrastructure, including upgrades to Honiara’s port, major road improvements, and new sports facilities such as the $119 million national stadium. Cooperation also extends to Chinese language training, scholarships, and government capacity-building programmes. Since switching diplomatic ties, Solomon Islands officials have been visiting China almost monthly on “study tours”. Chinese provincial governments are also building links with Solomon Islands’ provinces, while universities on both sides are signing agreements to set up joint R&D centres. The concerns While the BRI has spurred major infrastructure growth, it has also raised concerns about long-term financial sustainability. A key worry is “debt-trap diplomacy”, where repayment pressures could threaten the Solomons’ control over key assets, as seen in countries like Sri Lanka. The islands also export most of their timber and natural resources to China, deepening economic dependence on the Chinese market. Concerns over China’s influence extend beyond trade and infrastructure. In 2022, the Solomons and China signed a security cooperation pact—initially kept secret—which alarmed Western allies over the possibility of a future Chinese military presence. These concerns soon proved justified. In January 2022, a PLA Air Force aircraft carrying riot gear and security personnel in camouflage landed in Honiara. This deployment, known as the China Public Security Bureau–Solomon Islands Policing Advisory Group (CPAG), has since become a permanent presence. China’s police maintain a 12-member presence on six-month rotations, operating across all provinces. There have also been reports of Beijing influencing local media, and recent international coverage has highlighted China’s role in the Solomons’ domestic politics, including during a no-confidence motion. The alternatives For the Solomon Islands, ties with China offer both opportunities and challenges. While the former Sogavare government leaned strongly toward Beijing, the current administration under Jeremiah Manele is trying to balance relations with both the US and China as the two powers compete for influence. The country is also trying to broaden partnerships with Australia, New Zealand, and others. Manele has repeatedly signalled a preference for partners like New Zealand on major projects such as the Bina Harbour development. But New Zealand cannot fund the project alone, and its attempts to secure additional donors have so far failed — leaving China eager to step in. This is just one example of how smaller nations, unable to attract Western support, often end up turning to China and risking deeper dependence or debt. In the crucial Pacific Ocean region, the Solomon Islands exemplify smaller nations caught between the geopolitical rivalry of the US and China. (The writer is a foreign affairs expert. Views personal.)

Kangaroo Justice

Bangladesh’s unelected regime has converted the law into a blunt instrument to eliminate the pro-India Sheikh Hasina.

ree

Bangladesh’s interim rulers have finally delivered the spectacle they seemed to crave: a death sentence for Sheikh Hasina, handed down by a tribunal whose credibility is as hollow as the government that convened it. The former Prime Minister, who is in India at present, was tried in absentia by the International Crimes Tribunal - an institution once created to prosecute the genocidal violence of 1971, now repurposed to brand as “international crimes” the actions of an elected leader confronting violent mobs on her own soil. The re-engineering of this court says less about Hasina’s conduct than about the ambitions of the unelected clique now running the country.


Bangladesh today does not have a legitimate government. It has an interim administration with no constitutional footing, led by Muhammad Yunus, a man parachuted into office with the blessing of foreign patrons, notably in Washington. This regime has now pushed through a trial designed to erase Hasina, her party and the political legacy of Bangladesh’s liberation.


The charges against her strain coherence. The violence in question which included street rioting, arson, and mob assaults in the final days before Hasina’s ouster was domestic. There were no external actors, no cross-border operations, no semblance of the international dimension for which the tribunal was conceived. The court’s original purpose was to prosecute the atrocities committed by the Pakistan army and its collaborators in 1971. To place Hasina’s actions in the same category is to trivialise the genocide that created Bangladesh.


The mobs that overran Dhaka in those chaotic weeks targeted more than Hasina. They burned symbols of the country’s founding, vandalised tributes to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and assaulted courts, forcing judges to resign under threat. Against this backdrop, the tribunal’s composition and its sudden appetite for severity inspire little confidence. A bench formed in an atmosphere of intimidation cannot claim to represent impartial justice.


The larger aim appears to be to crush the Awami League before next year’s elections. The party, which commands deep social roots and historic legitimacy, is inconvenient for a junta trying to consolidate power without a popular mandate. De-legitimising Hasina through a capital sentence is an attempt to delegitimise the movement she leads. Any election held without the Awami League would disenfranchise millions.


This political purge coincides with Dhaka’s sharp turn away from India and towards Pakistan. Yunus and his circle have unfurled a foreign policy that flatters Islamabad and indulges Jamaat-e-Islami, the party that sided with the Pakistani army during the liberation struggle and has long nurtured hostility towards India. Jamaat’s sudden policy influence helps explain why anti-India sentiment has surged. Yunus, too, has played to this gallery.


If Hasina were truly the war criminal the tribunal now claims, it is hard to fathom why Bangladesh’s army chief would have personally flown her out of Dhaka to prevent mob violence against her. His actions would themselves demand scrutiny. Yet the interim leadership pretends not to notice this contradiction. Instead, Yunus boasts on global stages that the uprising against Hasina was “meticulously designed,” even introducing the supposed architect of the “student movement” that toppled her.


The government’s diplomatic posture is equally brazen. Knowing full well that India will not extradite a political rival facing a death sentence, Dhaka has sought to raise the temperature. Officials now claim that extradition is a “mandatory duty” under the bilateral treaty, threatening that India’s refusal to hand her over would constitute an “act of enmity” against Bangladesh.


The extradition treaty explicitly allows India to refuse requests of a political character, or those made in bad faith. Both conditions apply in abundance. Nor will Indian courts ignore that a death sentence makes extradition all but impossible. Economic offenders and terrorists from Western countries often evade deportation for years; Dhaka’s expectation that New Delhi will promptly surrender an ex-prime minister condemned by a tainted tribunal is wilfully unrealistic.


India’s response has been restrained thus far. India has avoided endorsing the verdict - not least because it reeks of political vengeance but its cautiously worded statement leaves room for firmer positions ahead.


Bangladesh’s interim rulers may believe they can stabilise the country by eliminating the Awami League. More likely, they have planted the seeds of a legitimacy crisis from which the country will struggle to recover.

Comments

bottom of page