Taipei, Taiwan – In October 2019, the United States announced that the Peace Corps, the long-standing volunteer program founded by John F. Kennedy, would return to the Solomon Islands after a two-decade absence.

The announcement was the latest in a series of moves by Washington to counter China’s growing presence in Pacific island nations such as the Solomon Islands, a sparsely populated but strategically located archipelago located about 2,000 km northeast of Australia.

More than four years later, the Peace Corps has still not arrived, even as volunteers have returned to other Pacific countries such as Fiji, Tonga and Samoa after halting operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, the Peace Corps continues to miss deadlines to receive funding from the U.S. Congress to support its work in the Solomon Islands. Only $500 was allocated in fiscal year 2024 for the program’s work in the archipelago, which has a population of about 700,000.

Neither Washington nor Honiara have given any official indication that the Peace Corps’ return is not going as planned.

But behind the scenes there are suspicions that Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s government is deliberately stalling for political reasons – particularly to appease China, which has made major advances in the archipelago in recent years.

“The Chinese influenced the Solomon Islands Cabinet’s decision to suspend approval for the Peace Corps’ return to the islands,” a former U.S. official familiar with negotiations for the Peace Corps’ return said on condition of anonymity , told Al Jazeera.

The ex-official said that the agreement appeared to have been postponed “indefinitely” based on discussions with officials involved in the negotiations.

“The initial euphoria over the U.S. announcement that Peace Corps volunteers would return was dampened by senior Solomon Islands officials as they introduced delay after delay in Peace Corps agreement negotiations,” the former official said.

The US State Department and the US Embassy in Honiara, which opened in February, did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The Peace Corps declined to comment, although in its 2024 budget report released in March it said the agency was “close to finalizing agreements” with the Solomon Islands.

The Chinese Embassy in Honiara said the Peace Corps’ return was a matter for the Solomon Islands and US governments and that investigations should be directed to “relevant stakeholders”.

Peter Kenilorea Jr., an opposition lawmaker in the Solomon Islands, said the unexplained delays reflected the “geopolitical climate” under Sogavare.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything negative about the Peace Corps’ work in the past. So to me this just underscores that this delay is about politics and that it has very little to do with the work of the Peace Corps. “The Corps would move in,” said Kenilorea Jr., who did not specifically identify China as a possible factor in the Cited delays, told Al Jazeera.

The Peace Corps’ apparent difficulties in the Solomon Islands highlight the apparent limits of Washington’s ability to suppress China’s growing influence in the Pacific.

Beijing’s advances in the region have been particularly visible in Kiribati and the Solomon Islands, where Sogavare has been seriously cultivating ties with his Chinese counterparts since being elected for a fourth term in 2019.

In 2019 Honiara ended its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in favor of recognizing Chinaand signed two security and policing deals with Beijing in 2022 and July, respectively, which drew protests from the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Sogavare has defended his government’s deepening ties with China, insisting that his country does not choose sides between major powers and accusing the United States and its allies of being “unneighborly.”

In August, the Solomon Islands leader declined to meet with two visiting U.S. lawmakers. One of them later compared Beijing’s relations with the country to a “viper coiling around its prey.”

During a visit to the US in September to address the UN General Assembly, Sogavare skipped a meeting between US President Joe Biden and other Pacific leaders at the White House.

Sogavare, who met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in July, told reporters he hoped to avoid a “lecture” from the Americans.

Celsus Talifilu, a former political adviser in the Solomon Islands, said it was “hard to deny the strong possibility” that the government is being left behind because of its ties with China.

“Basically the current one [ government] is a pro-China government and anti-Western, especially those like Sogavare himself,” Talifilu, whose former boss Daniel Suidani clashed with Honiara over his China policies during his time as governor of Malaita province, told Al Jazeera.

For Sogavare, the delays could help reinforce the narrative that the U.S. has neglected the Pacific, said Graeme Smith, an associate professor in the department of Pacific affairs at the Australian National University.

“There is more than a grain of truth to this,” Smith told Al Jazeera.

“By delaying the Peace Corps, they can still effectively push the narrative that the U.S. is still neglecting them.”

Even before the diplomatic changes under Sogavare, the US was not popular with everyone in the Solomon Islands.

The islands were a key battlefield for U.S. and Japanese forces during World War II, killing thousands of innocent civilians. Tens of thousands of unexploded munitions were left behind by the war and have killed or injured residents to this day.

For countries like the Solomon Islands, which may have felt like junior partners in their relationships with the US, Australia and New Zealand, China’s expansion into the Pacific changed the dynamic by providing an alternative source of funding.

Among other benefits, China provided the Solomon Islands with a $66 million loan to build cell phone towers and $120 million to build new facilities for the recently concluded 2023 Pacific Games.

Western officials fear such largesse is an example of China laying the groundwork for an expanded military presence in the Pacific, possibly including a naval base in the Solomon Islands or another Pacific island nation.

Cleo Paskal, a non-resident senior fellow for the Indo-Pacific at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the only party that benefits from the Peace Corps not returning is China.

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] “sees anything good developed by someone else as harmful to the interests of the People’s Republic of China,” Paskal told Al Jazeera, adding that based on her conversations with officials within the US government, it is believed that the policy in the game.

“Think about it. We’re talking about the Peace Corps being part of the US’s soft power. Why would China want to enable something that helps the US? Given how pro-PRC this administration is, it’s not surprising “If there are delays. It blocks the US and gives China time to embed itself unhindered.”

Despite the geopolitical risks involved, U.S. officials believe Sogavare’s stance toward Beijing may be as much a matter of domestic politics as of international relations.

“Prime Minister Sogavare has no choice but to stick with the People’s Republic of China [PRC] for his political survival and legacy, but not all Solomon Islanders support the symbiotic relationship between Sogavare and the People’s Republic of China,” US diplomats said in a statement last year Cable obtained by Al Jazeera through a Freedom of Information request.

The ANU’s Smith said Sogavare’s approach to governing had earned him widespread attention in both the US and China, including in meetings with Xi, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US presidential adviser Kurt Campbell.

“This way he gets attention and headlines. “If he didn’t do all that, what pantomime would he have?” said Smith.

“This has never happened in the past. There was literally cricket in Honiara and suddenly he is at the center of geopolitical events.”