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The Chinese companies trying to buy strategic islands
Small businesses from China have scoured the globe for important strips of land. Some say they are a front for Beijing, others say this is too simplistic or outright wrong.
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The Philippine Coast Guard monitoring Chinese vessels at Sabina Shoal in the South China Sea in April last year.
PHOTO: EPA–EFE
Kathrin Hille
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(FINANCIAL TIMES) - Three years ago, Mr 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 deep-water 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 American navies.
