In 2019, the Solomon Islands switched from recognizing Taiwan to formally acknowledging the People’s Republic of China, alarming Western capitals because of the archipelago nation’s strategic location in the western Pacific. But observers who viewed the reversal as the straightforward exchange of a poorer patron for a richer one were mistaken. The change of foreign partners was part of a dizzying series of turns in the country’s fissiparous domestic politics. It took place amid public anger at