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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.)

The Communication Gap

When leaders speak in vision and teams hear instructions

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Some breakdowns inside companies don’t begin with conflict. They begin with applause.


Last week at The Workshop, the same mid-sized design firm many readers will remember from The People Paradox, the team gathered for an “important town hall.”


Rohit, their founder, walked up to the small stage near the pantry and delivered what he believed was a clear, energising strategic update. He spoke about “sharpening the mission,” “repositioning the brand,” and “embedding innovation in every sprint.” He outlined goals, market shifts, and expectations. People nodded. Slack lit up with emojis. Energy filled the room. But five minutes after the applause, the truth surfaced: no two people had walked away with the same understanding.


For leaders, communication is often a story. For teams, communication is a responsibility. And that gap between narrative and consequence is where misalignment is born. Here’s what played out inside people’s heads:


Meera (Design): “He wants ownership… but of what?”

Aman (Engineering): “More features? Fewer? Faster?”

Priya (Ops): “Is this a new direction or just a new vocabulary?”

Marketing: “Innovation in every sprint? Does that change my quarter?”


Rohit finished the town hall thinking he had created alignment. The team walked back to their desks feeling like they had just watched a trailer without receiving the script. It wasn’t incompetence. It wasn’t resistance. It was interpretation. And interpretation is where most leadership clarity collapses.


Founders, especially passionate ones, speak in arcs. They describe futures, patterns, shifts, moods. Teams don’t receive arcs. They receive implications. A strategy speech becomes:

• “Will my workload change?”

• “What does this mean for my deadlines?”

• “Is this a warning?”

• “Is this about my team?”


Leaders walk away feeling energised by what they meant. Teams walk away feeling accountable for what they understood. Those are not the same things.


One of the most common misalignments inside growing companies is what I call the Mixed-Signal Moment. At The Workshop, Rohit often told his team:


“Take initiative. I trust your judgment.”


And they believed him. Until the day Meera led a pitch with a bolder design direction and Rohit quietly reworked the entire deck an hour before the meeting. No debate. No critique. Just a soft override. It wasn’t hostility. It was instinct.


But Meera read it as: “Your initiative is approved only when it matches my version of it.” This is how encouragement slowly becomes caution.


Most bosses say, “You don’t need my sign-off”. But their reactions over time tell a different story. Teams create a protective loop:

• “Let me just run this by him…”

• “I’ll check alignment.”

• “I don’t want her to be surprised.”


Founders think they’re empowering. Teams think they’re being tested. And slowly, without anyone naming it, a company loses initiative not through rules but through pattern recognition. People don’t follow instructions. People follow historical reactions.


In another organisation we studied, a hospital, a new workflow was announced during a shift briefing: “Let’s reduce check-ins to improve patient flow. The nurses nodded. But when one nurse asked a clarification, the doctor’s tone tightened: “Did I say anything about documentation?” He didn’t yell. He didn’t scold. He simply sounded irritated. It was enough. The questions stopped. The misunderstanding multiplied. And by next week, the entire system cracked. The system didn’t break because of the message. It broke because of the silence that followed.


The Real Gap Leaders Miss

The Communication Gap doesn’t come from poor communication. It comes from mismatched assumptions about how communication works.

Leaders suffer from:

1. Lack of Translation

Vision – action

Strategy – expectations

Encouragement – boundaries


2. Lack of Closure

What’s changing? What’s staying the same?


3. Lack of Consistency

Monday’s message vs Thursday’s reaction.


4. Lack of Calibration

Teams don’t hear the boss. Teams hear the authority behind the boss. That’s what makes leadership communication high impact … even when it’s low volume.


Closing Reflection

What happened at The Workshop happens everywhere. The boss believes they’ve aligned the room. The team walks away aligning themselves to uncertainty. Alignment rarely fails because people aren’t listening. It fails because people are interpreting. And interpretation is shaped by emotion, tone, history, and fear far more than by language.


The Boss Paradox begins here … with the quiet, costly gap between meaning and understanding. The repair will come later. For now, the work is simply to see it clearly.


(The writer is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. She writes about the human mechanics of scaling where clarity, culture, and leadership evolve in real time. Write to her at rashmi@ppsconsulting.biz)

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