Fiji’s uneasy relationship with China has hit an uncommon roadblock, within the type of an workplace door.

In a video posted to social media on Tuesday, the Pacific island nation’s prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, stated he was declining an invite to go to China this week as a result of he had tripped whereas taking a look at his cellphone, hanging his head on a door on the entrance to a authorities constructing.

“I do not know whether my head is hurt more than the door, or the door hurt more than my head,” Mr. Rabuka stated. He was carrying a shirt flecked with bloodstains, which he identified to viewers, and had a bandage on his head.

Because his physician must change the bandage on Friday, he stated, “I have had to inform China that I will not be able to undertake the trip coming up tomorrow night.” China had invited Mr. Rabuka to the town of Chengdu, the place he was to have met with Xi Jinping, the nation’s chief, on the World University Games.

The video has raised eyebrows, not least as a result of Mr. Rabuka, a former coup chief who democratically gained energy in Fiji’s tumultuous election late final yr, has sought to distance his nation from Beijing.

A press release on Twitter by China’s Embassy in Fiji, which had introduced Mr. Rabuka’s invitation to China, “conveyed the Chinese side’s sincere regards to Hon. Prime Minister Rabuka, wished him a speedy recovery, understood that HPM was unable to visit China” and expressed willingness to subject one other invitation to the nation.

China has been attempting to extend its affect amongst Pacific island nations, amongst which Fiji is a powerhouse, with a strong navy and an economic system that dwarfs these of its neighbors.

But since taking workplace, Mr. Rabuka has prompt that he may scrap an necessary policing settlement with China; made gestures towards recognizing Taiwan, the self-governing island that China considers a renegade province; and declined to fulfill with a visiting high Chinese diplomat, Ma Zhaoxu. (On that event, Mr. Rabuka stated he wanted to mourn a member of the family who had died.)

Last month in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, Mr. Rabuka appeared to trace that Fiji might transfer nonetheless farther from China and towards neighbors like Australia and New Zealand, each American allies. “If our systems and our values differ, what cooperation can we get from them?” he stated of Beijing.

Mr. Rabuka has since backed away from the thought of a rapprochement with Taiwan. But the prospect of a go to to China nonetheless got here as one thing of a shock.

And so when Mr. Rabuka posted his video, hypothesis swirled.

“It’s a curious accident, so to speak, but very convenient,” Alex Tan, a political scientist at Canterbury University in New Zealand, informed a news outlet in that nation.

Mr. Rabuka, for his half, appears to have anticipated that not everybody would take his story at face worth.

“I’m sure there’ll be a lot of speculations,” he stated. “But nothing to worry about.”