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Mongabay
Mongabay
For four days last November, Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, was on fire. Four people died during violent riots, and the city’s Chinatown was torched, leaving hundreds homeless. Anti-Chinese sentiments had been bubbling since September 2019, when Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare abandoned the country’s historical ties with Taiwan and switched allegiance to Beijing. The anger over this political realignment has been linked by some analysts to opposition to China’s state policies of atheism and communism among the predominantly Christian Solomon Islanders, and by others to fears tha…