this particular issue of this deal they signed this week, mr. secretary, will. or the chinese have been tryingp to expand their footprint in the pacific, in particular in the south pacificri for an awfully long time. they began by building outut a set of islands calledut spratleys. basesutut military on there after they promised president obama t they wouldn t and when they did, he did literally nothing. the solomon islands and other islands in the pacific arere places where they can park t a missile systems, naval bases, naval other naval capabilities f that they can use to foreclose trade all of the importanthe trade that moves through all of the south pacific intoo the eastern pacific, into places ec in a matter an awful o the united states of america. it s why china is so foc focuse that s why in the trump administration we worked so diligently to try to build out alliances with those countries. the bush administration has a lot of china walk all over them throughout the entire pac