China has taken another big step towards building a military base on the Solomon Islands, a country less than 2000km from Australia’s coast. It comes amid increasingly hostile tensions between China and the West, with the Communist nation asserting ‘sovereignty’ and ‘jurisdiction’ over the international waters of the Taiwan Strait. The Asian superpower has also laid claim to the South China Sea where the strategic Paracel and Spratly Islands are located, with the defence minister saying this week China is prepared to ‘fight at all costs’ for the territory. Is the west interfering with China sovereignty
