On the evening of November 26, on Honiara's Chinatown, a loud glass burst woke up a sleeping Chinese family.
The man got up violently, told his wife and children to quickly hide, picked up a club himself, put on his clothes and went out to check the situation.
Outside, there were loud voices, screams, explosions, screams, and sounds of intrigue.
Pushing open the door, the street was thick with smoke, the fire was soaring, and there were countless figures beating, smashing, robbing, and burning, and it was like a group of demons dancing under the light of the fire.
At this time, the once bustling Chinatown, restaurants, shops, schools, banks and even police stations were looted and burned by the mob, turning into ruins.
As if it were the end of the world, this scene is shocking.
What you hear and see now is not a battlefield, but a place in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, where a riot is underway against Chinese citizens and businesses.
Subsequently, instead of quelling, the riot accelerated.
Beginnings in Chinatown, downtown the capital, the government parliament building, and even the residence of Solomon Islands Prime Minister Sogavare were set on fire by thugs who demanded Sogavare's resignation.
On November 28, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Sogavare made a radio address vowing not to give in to pressure to resign. Sogavare said the violence sweeping the capital was orchestrated by a small number of people with "evil intentions" with the aim of overthrowing him.
"Riots", "Confrontation", "Minorities", "Evil Intentions", "Careful Planning"... Sogavare's words are meaningful and contain a lot of information.
What makes the once quiet and beautiful South Pacific island nation of Solomon Islands experience what it is now? Why would a riot make this small country the focus of the world? Who exactly is the "minority" in Sogavare's words?
Solomon Islands is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean, consisting of nearly 1,000 islands with a population of less than 700,000. Although the land area is small, only 28,000 square kilometers, the exclusive marine economic zone is as high as 1.6 million square kilometers, but it is still one of the least developed countries in the world.
Before World War II, the Solomon Islands had become a colony of many great powers.
In the 16th century, Spanish explorers discovered the island, because the indigenous people on the island wore gold jewelry, so the explorer thought he had found the legendary Golden Treasure of Solomon, so he named the archipelago "Solomon Islands".
After this, the land changed hands many times, and the Dutch, German and British colonists sang and appeared until 1893, when it became a "British Solomon Islands Protectorate".
After the outbreak of World War II, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was forced to enter the war.
Battle of Midway, the momentum of the Japanese Navy's advance was blocked, the strength was greatly damaged, solomon islands became a strategic point in the Pacific War, the Japanese army and the United States army launched a fierce battle for the islands here, after the Battle of Guadalcanal, the United States gained a firm foothold in the Solomon Islands, the Pacific war situation was completely reversed, the Japanese Naval Combined Fleet Commander Yamamoto Isoroku was also shot down by US military aircraft when he flew to the solomon Islands front line inspection.
After World War II, the Solomon Islands moved their capital from Tulagi to Honiara. By 1976, the Solomon Islands began to exercise internal self-government, and two years later it officially declared its independence. To this day, however, the Solomon Islands remain a member of the Commonwealth. While enjoying a special close relationship with Britain, he retained the power of independent diplomacy.
Solomon Islands has no army, just over 800 police officers. Australia and the Solomon Islands signed a bilateral security treaty in 2017 that allows Australian police, military and related personnel to be rapidly deployed to the Solomon Islands in the event of an emergency.
The long-standing antagonistic relationship between the capital of the Solomon Islands and Maleta Island has led to an Australian-led peacekeeping force stationed in the Solomon Islands from 2003 to 2017.
This is not the first time the capital, Honiara, has faced violent protests. Riots also broke out in Honiara after the 2006 Solomon Islands election, and much of Chinatown was flattened.
The drivers of tension have been in the country for decades and generations, many of which stem from the country's extreme poverty, limited economic development opportunities and inter-ethnic and intra-island rivalry between the two most populous islands.
Naturally, the Solomon Islands are a cornucopia. Its soil contains a large number of bauxite, nickel, copper, gold, phosphate and other substances, which can be regarded as a rich mineral deposit.
Logically, the template of the country sitting on the cornucopia should refer to Saudi Arabia, a large player in the Middle East, and selling minerals and oil can still make a fortune. No matter how bad it is, the development of tourism can also make a lot of money.
But in fact, Solomon Islands is the poorest country in the world, the mining industry is basically semi-abandoned, industrial development is quite backward, the people's education level is low, the quality of the labor force is poor, foreign enterprises are generally reluctant to invest, and the people can only rely on primitive agriculture and animal husbandry to make a living.
Solomon Islands' industrial output is even less than 5% of gdp, and the country's GDP is only 9.9 billion yuan, which is not as good as one-third of the GDP of an ordinary county in northern China.
As a result, Solomon Islands fell into the "trap" of almost all poor countries: they could not develop their domestic economies without money, and they could not attract foreign investment without culture.
What if I don't have money or culture? At this time, the United States sent it to the door, and the United States stuffed some money into the governments of these countries in exchange for the political returns of these countries and engaged in economic colonial expansion, which is called "gold dollar diplomacy."
In fact, to put it bluntly, the United States takes money to "bribe" these poor countries, uses monetary means to achieve its own goals, and controls the political economy and society of poor countries.
The United States has a very good set of "gold-dollar diplomacy" and has more than 100 years of history and experience. In September, for example, the Biden administration proposed a plan to pour $1 billion a year into 14 sovereign island nations in the South Pacific. But the United States has not made it clear how much money each country in the plan can share, because how much money can be taken depends on how well each island nation performs and whether it can help the United States achieve its political goals.
Even the Solomon Islands are in a more special position, with the United States bypassing the central government of the country and directly cramming aid into the hands of the province of Maleta, and in October 2020, the United States provided about $25 million in donations to Maleta. The antagonistic relationship between the central government and the local government of Mareta Province has a long history, which can be said to be a "feud", and the US move has undoubtedly deepened the rift within the country.
In 1999, civil war broke out between Guadalcanal, the capital of the country, and the province of Mareta; in April 2006, dissatisfaction with the election results of the election of the new prime minister, a large-scale riot broke out in the capital Honiara, in which the local Chinese and ethnic Chinese suffered a terrible impact.
Therefore, the purpose of the United States funding The province of Maleta is obvious, that is, to make the Solomon Islands unable to live in peace all day long, and the same long-term funding of the forces in the province of Maleta, as well as the Taiwan authorities.
However, the Taiwan authorities do not have as many routines as Lao Mei, in fact, the main reason is that their strength is not good, and they can only simply and rudely "throw money." But most of this money went into the pockets of the politicians of the province of Mareta, who ate the meat and then distributed the soup layer by layer, leaving the people with no melons and dates. Over the years, there has been no major development in the province of Mareta, and the locals have formed the habit of reaching out without money.
Of course, the Taiwan authorities' money is not taken in vain, and every year the fishing boats of the Taiwan authorities go to the waters of the Solomon Islands to fish, and every year they catch more tuna than the locals. The Taiwan authorities have also used the pretext of "helping" Mareta to develop agriculture in a big way, and they have wantonly dumped their own agricultural and industrial products, and the locals still favor "Taiwan goods."
The Taiwan authorities take their own money and provide assistance to the locals to buy their own goods, and they really have a hand in the economy.
Moreover, the relationship between the Taiwan authorities and Maleta is not only this; many "local elites" represented by Suedani, governor of Maleta Province, still returned from studying in Taiwan, and did not collect less political donations on weekdays, and even before the riots, the governor himself happened to go to Taiwan to "treat his illness."
Therefore, although The Chinese people have established diplomatic relations for more than two years, Suydani is still stubbornly maintaining relations with the Taiwan authorities, and during the epidemic, the Taiwan authorities have also provided epidemic prevention materials to Maleta Island separately, so Suydani even refused to invest in the province by companies with ties with China.
As a result, the Taiwan authorities' small ninety-nine, coupled with the small actions of the United States, eventually evolved into a great riot in the Province of Maleta and the capital of the Solomon Islands.
In fact, "small countries" in the South Pacific like the Solomon Islands also have their own helplessness.
First of all, solomon islands as an island country hanging overseas, there is no civilization exchange and collision, there is no agricultural base to develop industry, resulting in the country's late development, can only become a colony of the great powers. In addition, the narrow and long land has no strategic depth, let alone strategic determination, and can only become a wrestling point in the competition of major powers, a battlefield for geopolitical games, and a "toy" in the hands of the United States.
Solomon Islands is too small, the population is less than a million, the development of any industry is difficult to form a cluster, without large-scale large-scale production, it is not enough to talk about manufacturing. The best way out for the country is to "make support" for the big countries, but the "big countries" near Solomon have only one Australia that is difficult to protect on its own and has relied on selling minerals for a living.
At present, the only way for solomon islands to get out of the predicament is to insist on establishing diplomatic relations with Chinese mainland and develop its economy with the help of Chinese mainland, rather than nourishing violence and corruption with the support of the United States and Taiwan.