China's ‘Fengqiao Experience’ in the Solomon Islands

Navigating New Partnerships: Sovereignty and Strategy in the Pacific. China's "Fengqiao Experience" in the Solomon Islands has become a Rorschach test for international observers.

The recent pilot program of China's ‘Fengqiao Experience’ in the Solomon Islands has become a Rorschach test for international observers.

To some, it represents a promising model of community-led governance; to others, it's a thinly veiled instrument of foreign influence. The intensity of the Western reaction, however, reveals far more about the shiftin…