An Archipelago in the South Pacific Is Becoming the Newest Scene of Tensions Between China and the U.S.

China announced Tuesday night that it had signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands. The agreement, Beijing says, is to promote peace and stability and runs "parallel and complimentary" to existing cooperation arrangements with the Solomons—an archipelagic country of almost 1,000 tropical islands and atolls, situated between Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

News of the pact came a day after the U.S.