{"id":72871,"date":"2025-07-14T10:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T01:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jul\/14\/caught-in-the-contest-between-china-and-the-west-the-cook-islands-asks-where-its-future-lies"},"modified":"2025-07-14T10:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T01:18:07","slug":"caught-in-the-contest-between-china-and-the-west-the-cook-islands-asks-where-its-future-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=72871","title":{"rendered":"Caught in the contest between China and the west, the Cook Islands asks where its future lies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After the Pacific nation struck deals with Beijing, New Zealand abruptly cut off millions of dollars in critical aid and funding<\/p>\n<p>On a remote stretch of land in the Cook Islands lies a second world war airstrip. Once used as a wartime supply route by American forces, the narrow runway is in dire need of resealing to allow larger tourist jets to land. Leaders on the northern island of Penrhyn have asked New Zealand, Australia and the US to help, but none have come through. Now, they hope China will step in and fund it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is the dream,\u201d says Penrhyn\u2019s executive director, Puna John Vano. \u201cWe want to maintain our traditional partners, but if not, we\u2019re going to get assistance from elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the Cook Islands\u2019 main island of Rarotonga, many people are angry over the damage caused to relations with New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jul\/14\/caught-in-the-contest-between-china-and-the-west-the-cook-islands-asks-where-its-future-lies\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the Pacific nation struck deals with Beijing, New Zealand abruptly cut off millions of dollars in critical aid and fundingOn a remote stretch of land in the Cook Islands lies a second world war airstrip. Once used as a wartime supply route by Ame&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,855,3361,56,874,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-cook-islands","category-deep-sea-mining","category-new-zealand","category-pacific-islands","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4845"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72872,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72871\/revisions\/72872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}