Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Warnings that Beijing is actively targeting Pacific democracies have intensified in the United States.

As Washington renews its strategic compact ties with three Micronesian nations, there is growing concern over China's political, economic, and security footprint across the region.

Pacific security analyst Robert Underwood, chairman of the Pacific Center for Island Security and a former US congressional delegate from Guam, said Washington DC's latest warnings about China echo long-standing concerns but still fall short of a coherent economic strategy for the region.

"There is no US policy to economically invest in the Compact of Free Association (COFA) states," Underwood said. "There is only the promise of government-to-government assistance. It lacks imagination."

Edward Camacho, special assistant for military affairs for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, said the issue is not China as a nation but the methods used by the Chinese Communist Party to expand influence in small island states.

"China and the Chinese people are generally not a threat at all," Camacho said. "But the CCP and its cronies — including PLA personnel posing as diplomats and businesspeople — are creating misleading deals with heads of state and major businesses across the Pacific and beyond."

Camacho added that freely associated state (FAS) countries — a collective term for Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia - stand to gain more by welcoming everything the US has to offer, but should not be shy to ask for more support.

"To get more support, the FAS can use all of its comparative advantages, other than just its strategic importance in the geopolitical context. It can also leverage the fact that so many of their youth, from each FAS, sacrificed their lives in the military and other professions for the defense of the nation, the US that is."