Eyeing China, senior US lawmaker vows to back funding for Pacific islands

The Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee said on Friday he supported funding for U.S.-allied Pacific Island nations as a way to counter the influence of China, and would push to include them in any supplemental security aid bill. "That's such a critical part of our countering the malign influence of China, with the island nations that they're buying off, as you know, one by one," Representative Michael McCaul said at meeting with journalists sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. The Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Palau agreed to new 20-year funding programs with the United States last year under which Washington provides economic assistance, while gaining exclusive military access to strategic swaths of the Pacific that China covets.

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