Source: Nikkei Asia [Japan]
“The government of the Solomon Islands will not invite the U.S. and China to attend a key regional meeting in September, a move experts see as an effort to avoid diplomatic fallout over the alternative of singling out and excluding Taiwan from the event. The annual leaders meeting organized by the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), a key regional body comprising 16 Pacific island nations, Australia and New Zealand …. At last year’s PIF meeting in Tonga, Qian Bo, Beijing’s ambassador to the Pacific, successfully pushed to remove a paragraph from the forum’s joint communique that would have recognized Taiwan’s standing and involvement with the regional organization. Peter Kenilorea, a Solomon Islands MP who has criticized the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the Pacific, told Nikkei Asia in May that Honiara was under pressure from Beijing to exclude Taiwan from the forum.” (08/07/25)