Hundreds of Cook Icelanders organized demonstrations in the Avarua capital and the opposition leaders filed a vote without confidence against Prime Minister Mark Brown after having signed a five -year “action plan” with China.
The pact commits the small island to cooperate with China in the trade, investment and exploitation of “minerals of the seabed”. Critics and the government of New Zealand, the former colonial sovereign of the Pacific Autonomous country, complain that the Brown Agreement was concluded with little transparency.