Three years ago, Xu Changyu made his first attempt to get his hands on an island in the South Pacific. The vice-president of China Sam Enterprise Group quietly negotiated a 75-year lease on Tulagi, an islet with a natural deepwater harbour in the Solomon Islands.
The deal was blocked after the attorney-general declared it unlawful, but not without triggering suspicion among the public and the country’s traditional western allies that China was looking to build a military base in a spot that once hosted the British, Japanese and US navies.
