EXCLUSIVE: Communist China’s Infiltration of the Solomon Islands ‘Getting Stronger,’ MP Says

Solomon Islands' Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare (R) and China's Premier Li Qiang inspect the guard of honour during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on July 10, 2023. (Andy Wong/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON—A leading voice in the Solomon Islands Parliament says China’s communist regime is infiltrating his country at every level.

Peter Kenilorea Jr., a Solomon Islands member of parliament and chair of its Foreign Relations Committee, says the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has increasingly infiltrated the nation since Manasseh Sogavare, who’s pro-China, assumed the office of prime minister again in 2019.

In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Mr. Kenilorea said the Solomon Islands is now facing a crisis of public opinion, with pro- and anti-CCP discourse dividing the country’s people.

“That infiltration has just gotten stronger. It’s a battle of hearts and minds, really. That’s what’s happening in the Solomon Islands right now,” Mr. Kenilorea said.

“It’s more than just the government. It’s actually going through to the people themselves. ... [It’s] what we term locally in the Solomon Islands as ‘the switch.’”

That “switch” refers to Mr. Sogavare’s decision in 2019 to withdraw the nation’s diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in favor of the CCP.

Chinese Influence Pervades Solomon Islands

Mr. Kenilorea’s interview with The Epoch Times followed his meeting with Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on the CCP.

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The topic of CCP infiltration was a key concern during the two officials’ discussion, Mr. Kenilorea said, and he hopes that going forward, a greater U.S. engagement with the Solomon Islands may help assuage the growing pro-China sentiment.

“We’ve been talking about concerns of China, the CCP infiltration into the Solomon Islands, and some of the perspectives that I see in terms of that ongoing infiltration into society,” he said.

“At the same time, there’s a lot of hope for stronger engagement with the U.S. as well.”

Such engagement isn’t easy these days. The Sogavare administration inked a comprehensive strategic partnership with the CCP earlier in the year.

That deal follows another in late 2022 in which the Sogavare administration agreed to borrow more than $66 million from a Chinese state-owned bank to fund the construction of 161 telecommunications towers by tech giant Huawei.

The Biden administration launched its own investigation into Huawei last year, saying similar towers built in the United States were outfitted with equipment that could capture sensitive information from military bases and missile silos that the company could then transmit to China.

Mr. Kenilorea lamented the “debt trap” dealings with China and said the regime “targeted” constituents in the Solomon Islands with propaganda in order to win support for the towers.

“I’ve been quite consistent with my message. We shouldn’t have done this,” he said.

Mr. Kenilorea isn’t the first to raise the alarm about the Sogavare administration’s close ties with the CCP. Speaking out isn’t as easy as it once was, however, and anti-CCP rhetoric in the nation is sometimes now met with retaliation.

Such was the case with former Malaita Province Premier Daniel Suidani, who told The Epoch Times in April that members of the national government who promoted his ouster received bribes from the CCP.

After the vote to force Mr. Suidani from office, Alfred Sasako, a Solomon Islands journalist with ties to the CCP’s propaganda network, published a story claiming that Mr. Suidani was fomenting insurrection and meeting with Americans to plot the prime minister’s assassination.

The story’s only evidence was testimony by anonymous sources. Nevertheless, it was used to justify Mr. Suidani’s arrest for questioning.

Mr. Kenilorea said similar mechanisms now seemed to be aligning against him. CCP-backed interests in the country are working to undermine his reputation and prevent him from staying in office.

“They’re targeting very much my constituents and my people to get ... their minds switched away from perhaps voting me in the next time around,” Mr. Kenilorea said.

China-Backed Sogavare Seeks to Undermine US 

The Biden administration has prioritized engagement with the Pacific island nations as part of its Indo-Pacific Strategy, although the CCP claims that the effort is meant to contain its rise on the global stage.

The CCP-backed Sogavare administration has sought to tarnish the idea of an “Indo-Pacific” on the international stage, going so far as to remove the phrase from public documents.

“The ‘Indo-Pacific’ is to Prime Minister Sogavare a swear word. He hates those phrases,” Mr. Kenilorea said.

“If there’s any statement that has that [‘Indo-Pacific’] in there, he’ll do all he can to try and get rid of it.”

Mr. Kenilorea said efforts by the Biden administration to draft new agreements with the Sogavare administration earlier in the year were held up because of Mr. Sogavare’s efforts to remove any mention of the Indo-Pacific as a cohesive region.

“I have information that they were fighting tooth and nail to get those references out,” Mr. Kenilorea said of the Sogavare administration.

Relatedly, Mr. Kenilorea said there was a great deal of misinformation that suggested that the Indo-Pacific framework was at odds with Solomon Islands’ interests or existing political structures such as the Partners in the Blue Pacific, an informal group intended to foster economic and diplomatic engagement across island nations in the Pacific.

Therefore, the United States and the Solomon Islands need to ensure “continued engagement” at the leadership level across the Pacific and promote continued international cooperation, he said.

“[What] we need for our leaders to grasp [is] this idea of Indo-Pacific,” Mr. Kenilorea said. “I don’t think they understand what it is as a concept, what it means for them, and what role they have in that concept.”