In the Pacific, infrastructure is influence – but China appears to be alone in recognizing that.
The site of the future set of wharfs at Bina village, the Solomon Islands, as viewed from the sea.
Under a brilliant blue sky in the tiny village of Bina, a local landowner stood proudly outside her weathered thatch-roofed pole house. When Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele visited in March 2025 to survey a planned port on her ancestral land, she didn’t hold back. “We don’t want China to take on the project,” she told him.
The prime minister’s quiet reply lingered in the air. “Even myself, I don’t want,” she recalled him saying in reply.
Unlike the previous Sogavare government, which was extremely pro-China, the Manele government has been trying to manage both risks and opportunities with China and to diversify its international partners. Manele has signaled multiple times that his preferred partner for the Bina Harbor project is New Zealand, but New Zealand can’t fund the project alone. Will Australia, Japan, Korea, the European Union, or even the United States now step up with aid to help Solomon Islands maintain
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