Answer: South Pacific Ocean
Notes: New Zealand has recently suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands due to growing tensions over the island group's closer ties with China. The Cook Islands are a group of 15 small islands spread over 2 million square kilometres in the South Pacific Ocean. They lie in the centre of the Polynesian Triangle, about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. Geographically, they are east of Niue, Tonga, and Samoa; northeast of New Zealand; south of Kiribati; and west of French Polynesia.
