The Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna - who put his country into lockdown on March 5 - has said they will soon run out of money. Incoming prime minister Mark Brown tabled a Budget last month that would support the Cook Islands through to September: "After that we will look at borrowing."

The current financial situation has hit Rarotonga and the other 14 islands that make up the Cooks harder than any recent cyclone rebuilding programme. It is matching 1996 proportions when the Cooks were on the brink of bankruptcy.

Fletcher Melvin, chairman of the recently formed Cook Island Private Sector Taskforce, warns there is a real risk of history repeating.

As well as New Zealand, China has supported Rarotonga with infrastructure projects and loans. As the tourism-starved Cooks head towards insolvency, will they be forced to turn to China to bail them out?

China is anywhere and everywhere in the Pacific with the money and the resources to take over the South Pacific Islands.

The temptation is too great for China and the upside is huge.

This could also place New Zealand in an awkward position against China. Aotearoa needs to help the Islands keep the debt to China at bay or at least current.

From September onwards Rarotonga, for one, is in a very precarious position. Our Government has floundered with no valid excuse for not addressing this before now.

A Reuters report in 2018 said the majority of China's financial support comes in the form of concessional loans, while traditional regional players Australia, New Zealand and the United States tend to provide gifts. Some within the current New Zealand Government fear the Cooks will follow Tonga in their reliance on funding from China.

China has already paid the Cooks administration millions of dollars for tuna fisheries licences, loaned many more millions for the massive Te Mato Vai water project and there is talk of Beijing funding the development of a deep-water port on remote Penrhyn Island.

Two years ago, Cooks opposition deputy leader James Beer warned about the effect the "soft loans" that accompany Chinese aid were having on the economy. He said if the tourism industry was to fail, the country might not be able to service the loans.

Yes, we can send them money - New Zealand currently provides about two-thirds of the Cooks' official development assistance - but they don't want handouts, just tourists. Tourism accounts for nearly 70 percent of the Cook Islands economy and in June, for example, the Cooks would usually host 16,000 visitors, 11,000 of those coming from New Zealand.

Instead, Puna says, the resorts are "empty".

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Mike Pero: An air bridge to the Cook Islands - why not? Otherwise Rarotonga will become part of China - Newshub