Epoch Times - Why Beijing Wants to Control the Solomon Islands | Rep. Neal Dunn
Aired: 2025-11-07
Duration: 01:52


=== Island Hopping Strategy (01:51) ===

[00:00:00]  Anybody who's ever studied military history, especially in the Pacific, realizes immediately that the distances, number one, are huge.
[00:00:10]  And number two is you can't get to China or, by the way, World War II Japan without going through all those islands.
[00:00:19]  So that was Douglas McCarthy's famous island hopping campaign.
[00:00:23]  He didn't do that because he just thought it would be warm-up exercise on the islands.
[00:00:28]  That's what he needed to do to get to Japan.
[00:00:31]  And China knows that there's actually a first and second island chain, easily identifiable on any world map.
[00:00:41]  And the Solomon Islands is a very, very key location.
[00:00:47]  And it's right in the middle of access to China.
[00:00:53]  And they want to own that.
[00:00:55]  They want to control that.
[00:00:56]  And by the way, controlling means controlling all their communications.
[00:00:59]  They already do all the cell phones.
[00:01:01]  So they got that.
[00:01:03]  The communications, fiber optic cables, they already own all those.
[00:01:08]  And the government.
[00:01:09]  Now, the people of the Solomon Islands, generally speaking, don't really like the Chinese government or the Chinese Communist Party.
[00:01:17]  They don't want to have anything to do with it.
[00:01:19]  In fact, just about five years ago, they rioted and burned down Chinatown.
[00:01:25]  And nonetheless, the Chinese have kept going in there and bribing, corrupting, as they do their Belt and Road initiatives, as I call it, bribery and corruption initiative.
[00:01:39]  And they have won over a majority of the parliament.
[00:01:42]  So they have the votes now.
[00:01:44]  And that means they control who gets elected prime minister by the parliament.
[00:01:50]  That's the way they do that.