China’s Mad Dash into the Solomon Islands Breeds Resentment

Down a dirt road outside the Solomon Islands’ capital city, past Chinese construction projects and shops where Chinese merchants sell snacks, a tribal chief tried to explain what it feels like to have a rising superpower suddenly take an interest in a poor, forgotten place desperate for development.

“At first,” said the chief, Peter Kosemu, 50, as he sat in the shade on Guadalcanal, the largest of the Solomon Islands, “most people just wanted to see what was going on.”