A new world order is coming into being in Oceania, it seems, with Solomon Islands as the epicentre of geopolitical competition between China and the US.
This nation of almost 1,000 islands (of which only 147 are inhabited) and 650,000 people, in the South Pacific, hasn’t exactly been a global player since it gained independence from Britain in the 1970s. It’s “one of the poorest countries in the region with a low level of human development”, according to the United Nations. So why the international political squall?
The reason is that China has just signed a new security agreement with Solomon Islands, which has caused much spluttering in the US, Australia and New Zealand. Under the terms of the deal, China’s navy will now be able to dock vessels roughly 1,250 miles north-east of Australia, in a region that Australia’s home affairs minister recently described as “our backyard”.
