The U.K. government is considering the transfer of a key strategic outpost sitting in the middle of the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, an island nation with deep Chinese ties, as the Trump administration reportedly considers purchasing the territory.

Downing Street is contemplating the possibility of giving the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, even though it contains a joint U.K.-U.S. military base, Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia. China has close economic ties to the island nation through the Mauritius-China Free Trade Agreement, according to the Mauritius Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The South China Morning Post claimed the Trump administration was attempting to buy the islands, but Reuters reported that Mauritius hasn’t received any proposal from the U.S. government. The British government has paused the deal in response to opposition from President Donald Trump.

“China has long invested in its relationships and presence (economic, people) in Mauritius, an island nation to which the current UK government would like to cede the Chagos Islands [in the British Indian Ocean Territory],” naval warfare and advanced technology expert at the Heritage Foundation, Brent Sadler, told the DCNF. “There is [ample] evidence to indicate that Mauritius would not act to protect the operational viability of Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands against Chinese interference.”

“As a general matter, we do not comment on private diplomatic conversations,” the State Department told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The country was the first African nation to sign a bilateral free-trade agreement with China, formally cementing its relationship with Beijing in 2019.

“[Mauritius] recently denied Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s aircraft permission to transit through its airspace, giving a sense of how close it is to Beijing,” Indo-Pacific expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Cleo Paskal, told the DCNF. “If Mauritius gets the archipelago, [it] is also likely to grant [access to the] Chinese ‘fishing fleet’ and ‘research vessel’ fleet … very possibly followed by Chinese ‘tourism development’.”