Interviewed on Radio New Zealand this morning, the Prime Minister conceded that there were “challenges and complexities” in the government’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Fearful, and seemingly out of her depth, she wouldn’t or couldn’t identify any of those “challenges and complexities”. And yet she is criticised for not doing enough to keep in Beijing’s good graces by the person in New Zealand politics with an even worse record on PRC issues – Simon Bridges, leader of the National Party.
I don’t have anything much to say about the Air New Zealand story, or any particular reason to doubt the slowly-emerging explanation (which itself seems to have a PRC-coercion dimension, dating back to last year’s PRC insistence that airlines not suggest that Taiwan – an independent democratic country – was in fact or in any way not part of the PRC). It is just that were the true story to have been more worrying, it isn’t clear that Air New Zealand would have much incentive to be straight with customers or the public: they have an ongoing business to run and Beijing relations to keep smooth (and, of course, the chief executive is the chair of the PM’s Business Advisory Council). But perhaps leaks from within Air New Zealand would mean the truth still got out?
What of the two Barry Soper stories (this one from the front page of the Herald, and this opinion piece)? The first is introduced this way
Diplomatic links with China appear to have plummeted to a new low as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is given the cold shoulder by Beijing and a major tourism promotion is postponed by the superpower.
Of the visit to Beijing, we learned this yesterday
Ardern confirmed she had an invitation from the Chinese administration to meet President Xi Jinping, but the problem was finding a suitable date. She was meant to meet with the President at the end of last year.
She wouldn’t say whether or not she was confident the meeting would take place this year.
In other words, she isn’t confident it will happen at all. What is hard to understand is why any self-respecting person would put themselves through this rigmarole? Abasement before the emperor, and all for the sake of a few New Zealand businesses (often taxpayer subsidised ones) that have got themselves too exposed to a country with a noxious regime. She keeps telling us we are an independent sovereign state, not some tributary regime. Why can’t she just politely walk away (and get some aide to make her a note of how constructive and useful – enhancing to their reputations – foreign leaders meetings with Adolf Hitler were). Perhaps late last year the “scheduling” excuse – “we all have busy calendars” – might have washed with some. It clearly doesn’t now. And that shouldn’t worry New Zealanders. It shouldn’t be a cause for reproach from an Opposition leader who (a) has never distanced himself from his foreign affairs spokesperson’s defence of the PRC concentration camps in Xinjiang, and (b) who retains in his caucus, and expresses support for, a Chinese Communist Party member and former PLA intelligence official, and who (c) is understood to rely on that member as one of his largest party fundraisers. That is where the focus should be, not on selling our souls for a meeting with Xi Jinping.
And then there is the year of the Chinese tourist,
The 2019 China-New Zealand Year of Tourism was meant to be launched with great fanfare at Wellington’s Te Papa museum next week, but that has been postponed by China.
Industry people and regime-sycophants had been very keen on this exercise. The Contemporary China Research Centre – funded partly MFAT, chaired by a New Zealander with a significant role in the global Confucius Institute movement – was even hosting a conference on it late last year. But this isn’t some sort of normal country. What Beijing giveth, Beijing can also take away. We are told
Richard Davies, manager of tourism policy at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, said: “China has advised that this event has had to be postponed due to changes of schedule on the Chinese side.”
Officials are now working with China to reschedule the opening.
Believe all that and you’ll believe anything. But the Prime Minister claimed to believe it, telling her RNZ interviewer that she could only go on what she’d been told, and she’d been told there was a scheduling problem. I’m sure she doesn’t really believe it, but why can’t she come straight with the New Zealand public? She is supposed to serve us, not a small group of business interests. Better to take explicit credit for a slightly more distant relationship with one of the most appalling regimes on the planet. Especially if all that talk about kindness and empathy means anything at all. But she won’t do that – won’t square with the public about the nature of the regime she (and his predecessors) have been pandering too, all no doubt on official advice.
You got a sense of the sort of business sector pressure she seems to be under in how she responded to the interviewer’s questions about Huawei. Much as the China-oriented bits of the business community – and the China Council – must hate it, almost everything that has emerged on Huawei in the last couple of months only confirms how unwise any decent and self-respecting country would be to allow Hauwei equipment to play a key role in 5G networks. And yet the Prime Minister seemed to interpret the question as a suggestion that we should back down and just let Hauwei – and the PRC state – do its thing. ‘If we did that could we really say we had an independent foreign policy?” was the gist of her response.
Barry Soper seems to be championing some of that sort of “never mind national security, never mind self-respect, never mind the advice of longstanding friends and allies, lets never ever upset Beijing” line. It was clear in his selection of people to quote from in his article. There was this, apparently on Huawei
Asset management and corporate adviser David Mahon, based in Beijing, said governments needed to get over thwarting Chinese economic aims in a way reminiscent of the Cold War struggle between capitalism and communism. “It’s unhelpful for politicians and a few anti-Chinese professors to feed uncorroborated McCarthyite conspiracies about Chinese spy networks in their countries and targeting anyone who doesn’t share their view,” Mahon said.
Just lie back and let Beijing have its way seems to be Mahon’s perspective. That isn’t how self-respecting people, or nations, act. But perhaps if you are just desperate for the next deal none of that stuff matters?
And then there was more melodramatic stuff from Philip Burdon, until recently chair of the taxpayer-funded PR outfit the Asia New Zealand Foundation, and of course a longserving senior National Party figure.
Philip Burdon,….said New Zealand couldn’t afford to take sides.
“We clearly need to commit ourselves to the cause of trade liberalisation and the integration of the global economy while respectfully and realistically acknowledging China’s entitlement to a comprehensive and responsible strategic and economic engagement in the region,” he said.
Sources in Beijing say China plans trade retaliation…..
Two-way trade with China trebled over the past decade to $27 billion. “The implications for New Zealand are dangerous at every level,” Burdon said.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the PRC seriously committed itself to the practice of liberalisation? Doesn’t seem likely. And “respectfully acknowledge their entitlement”? Like true vassals?
But what’s with this “can’t afford to take sides” business? It has been a convenient framing for some time, as if we are asked to choose between the US and the PRC. Even if that were the choice, the United States (for all its faults) remains much more in tune with the values and attitudes of New Zealanders than the lawless regime in Beijing does. But, of course, the choice isn’t really between the US and the PRC, but between the PRC and New Zealand, or even (charitably) the interests of a small number of New Zealand businesses (and parties reliant on donations) and New Zealand as a whole. Given that choice, we can’t afford our governments not to take sides, not to back New Zealand and its values and long-term interests. That includes defending the integrity of our political system, defending the freedoms of ethnic Chinese New Zealanders (whose media and community associations seem to have been largely taken over by Beijing-affiliated groups), and being the sort of nation that stands up internationally for the sort of behaviour – treatment of other people – we expect.
There is more from Philip Burdon in Barry Soper’s op-ed
We can’t afford to let this diplomatic tightrope slacken and that’s most certainly the view of a Peters confidante, former Trade Minister in the Bolger Government and recently the chair of Asia 2000 Phillip Burdon.
The mushroom magnate says China has constructively sought to engage with New Zealand for which we should be grateful.
It’s utterly ridiculous, Burdon contends, that China has sinister plans to subvert and interfere in our society or in our democratic institutions.
Ah, it is a debt of gratitude – perhaps serviced with periodic offerings of tribute – that we owe to Beijing, at least according to Burdon, for all that “constructive engagement”. What exactly was that?
As for Burdon’s final sentence, one presumes he is so far down the track of abandoning all sense of self-respect that the presence of a former PLA intelligence official, who hob-nobs with the embassy and never ever says anything critical of Beijing just doesn’t bother Philip Burdon. There are deals I guess, and never mind the integrity of our system. Perhaps it doesn’t bother him that Parliament’s justice committee is chaired by someone with close ties to various United Front institutions? It should. It isn’t necessarily that Beijing “has” sinister plans – as if this is something in the future. The very fact that Jian Yang in particular still sits in Parliament, challenged by no one in the entire political spectrum tells you that, by accident or design, those visions have already been coming to pass. Or when neither the Prime Minister nor the Opposition leader will make a clear stand in defence of Anne-Marie Brady and her work.
I’m sure Beijing has no interest in toppling our formal institutions. Why would they when those institutions have rotted from the inside. I guess he too wants us to believe that only a “few anti-Chinese professors” are at all bothered.
All of which brings us back to the opening line of Barry Soper’s op-ed
New Zealand is feeling the heat of the Chinese dragon’s breath and if we’re not careful it could incinerate us.
Which is simply nonsense. As an economy, we have much more to worry about from a sharp Chinese economic slowdown – which may be underway already – than from any sorts of specific attempts at economic coercion of New Zealand. The PRC is a big country, and in a world with few buffers a recession there could matter a lot everywhere. As for New Zealand, the PRC certainly has some capacity to harm some specific sectors, perhaps even quite severely. I wouldn’t want to be a university vice-chancellor if the PRC decides to attempt to bring the government to heel. Then again, I don’t have any sympathy with those people, who have put themselves at the mercy of a known thug, all backed by dodgy immigration provisions, rather than looking to manage their exposures (as prudent businesses, unable to twist governments to their purposes, would). I have some more sympathy for tourism operators – who mostly are operating in an open market. As for commodity exporters, well they are selling commodities and (to a first approximation) what isn’t sold in the PRC will be sold somewhere else. Sometimes values and interests cost – in many ways, the only true measure of what is valuable is the price one is willing to pay to defend it. Too many of these Beijing defenders don’t seem to have any particular interest in defending our system, our people – let alone standing against the sheer awfulness of the PRC regime at home and abroad.
We can’t fix the PRC gross human rights abuses. I’m not even suggesting we should be at the forefront of moves on those issues. But when other countries speak and our governments don’t, they shame us. Neither our Prime Minister nor our Opposition leader will utter a word about (for example) Xinjiang, or about the abducted Canadians, even when other countries have – otherwise reprehensible Turkey only this week in a strong statement on Xinjiang. Life – politics – has to be more than just deals and donations if it is to have any meaning, command any respect. Frankly, it is hard to tell at present which side of politics is worse on this issue, but on balance I’d have to give it to National – whose only interest in all of this, in anything they say in public, seems to be placating Beijing. In office there are hard choices and calls to make – even if that is still no excuse for not openly engaging on the “challenges and complexities”. In Opposition one might have hoped, just occasionally, for a slightly more principled position. But I guess their actions, their people, their words reveal what their “principles” really are in this area.
croaking cassandra 
Who are “these Beijing defenders ????????
Name names
“Too many of these Beijing defenders don’t seem to have any particular interest in defending our system, our people – let alone standing against the sheer awfulness of the PRC regime”
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Mahon, Burdon, the entire China council, Goodfellow, Haworth, Bridges, McClay, MFAt.
It isn’t as if there is a shortage of names.
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Add another one to the list… more of the same.
National’s finance spokeswoman Amy Adams has accused the government of putting the economy at risk by offending China.
Ms Adams says the government has to do much better at insulating New Zealand from the impact of any slowdown in the global economy.
“The first thing is you don’t piss off your major trading partner and, let’s be really clear about this, China is our single biggest trading partner.”
https://www.nbr.co.nz/story/adams-sees-china-stoush-risk-economy
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What a disgrace……
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HUAWEI
Forget data hacking by an outside influence. It’s simpler than that. The threat is greater.
@0 Years ago I worked on a project at IBM using a PS1 PC. We had to intervene in the Basic Operating Kernel that when an impulse was transmitted out the RS-232 communications port the electrical state of the port was reversed from 4 volts to minus 4 volts which was sufficient to activate any external device attached to the RS-232 port. Working with an IBM engineer it took 2 weeks to achieve the task
The import of this it is easy to issue a software command to either enable or disable – turn on or off – anything you like
Now
Have a read of the outline of the American TV Series “Revolution”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(TV_series)
The show takes place in the post-apocalyptic near-future of the year 2027, 15 years after the start of a worldwide, permanent electrical-power blackout in 2012
What happens when the power is turned off and can’t be turned back on
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Or when the internet is turned off, as Russia is preparing for.
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Judith “Oravida” Collins is unlikely to be any better than Simon Bridges either.
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To be fair, Oravida and Judith Collins are no longer a close relationship. They have had a falling out and not really on talking terms.
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So her husband has sold up his share has he?
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Not shares that I am aware of. I think it is more a directorship with a operational and governance role with a substantial salary. These days he gets standard directors fees that any independent directors gets in any NZ board of directors capacity.
A new kiwi CEO with a NZ military background has been appointed and he has his own networks which makes Judiths husband somewhat obsolete from a previously operational capacity with the associated forced downgrade in wages.
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My goodness the Chinese Communists must regard us as a bunch of suckers and hillbillies. Such an easy pushover? The Quisling Party is sinking in the polls because they are morally unfit to govern. Most New Zealanders will rally around the present government if it refuses to kowtow to the bullies and thugs in Beijing. As for Chinese tourism in New Zealand, it is devoid of value to New Zealanders being largely conducted by vertically integrated Chinese owned and operated businesses. Good riddance.
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I’ve no idea how valuable Chinese tourism is for NZ. Obviously it has a higher CO2 emission cost than Australian or Filipino tourism however it carries one proven risk that tourism from other countries does not have: sabotage by the govt of China. They have already done so with South Korea – just turned the tourism tap off.
It is almost the opposite with the USA where the more we criticise their president the more tourists arrive.
Another consideration should be the average wealth of the tourist. There are now 35 countries with higher per capita wealth than NZ and those are the countries where we should be looking for tourists. Not China which despite its great economic growth still has an average GDP per capita that is half of say Taiwan.
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In December 2018, National party was polling at 46% and Labour party at 43%. These polls do jump around so I would not place any bets at the moment.
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Thank you for this article. I can’t resist repeating this: “”I’m sure Beijing has no interest in toppling our formal institutions. Why would they when those institutions have rotted from the inside.””
Turning planes round, cancelling tourism junkets at short notice, continual postponing meeting our Prime Minister – they are playing games with us. Just ignore them.
If we are too scared to actually condemn repression in Xinjiang then at least quietly announce we are reviewing the comments made by Turkey, Canada, France, etc.
To repeat myself: I will not vote for the National party unless they convince me they are not in the pocket of the Communist party of China.
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Just found from the NY Times article about the Turkish complaint abour human rights repression in China: “”The statement came in response to a question about recent reports that Abdurehim Heyit, a prominent Uighur folk poet and musician, had died in a Chinese internment camp. According to the Foreign Ministry, Mr. Heyit died while serving the second year of an eight-year prison sentence over one of his songs.””
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According to prominent Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut the verse that resulted in the eight-year prison sentence was:
We are known as dancing youths
Oh, fathers martyred in war.
We are grateful for needles
And forget the arrows of battle
with the Chinese authorities claiming ‘martyred in war’ referred to jihad.
https://freemuse.org/news/uyghur-dutar-king-detained-in-china/
Wouldn’t it be better for Jacinda Ardern to avoid meeting the leader of a country with such harsh laws?
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With so far 4 to 5 bombings by Uighur muslim extremists so far. I would expect heightened and tense security personnel.
When I visited Rome during Christmas 2017, there were armoured cars, security barriers with barb wire checkpoints and machine gun armed soldiers at every corner of the entire city of Rome of 3 million people.
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How many concentration camps in Italy Dec 2017?
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Depends on your definition of concentration camp. Lining up for several hours getting bags x-rayed and to get a electronic hand patdown with armed soldiers herding you through barb wire under a hot steaming unrelenting sun(fortunately cooler in Christmas) and no nearby toilets could be construed as torture in Rome.
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At most “masochism” (given holiday trips to the sights of Rome are entirely voluntary)
You seem to be attempting to trivialise evil….
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Chinese tourism is knocking out other sources. Bloomberg and the Financial Times had articles on NZ’S “over tourism”. What’s more it is an industry largely served by Chinese. New Zealanders who work in tourism wouldnt miss the Chinese (hotel owners maybe?)
https://www.interest.co.nz/business/89406/masseys-pro-vice-chancellor-professor-paul-spoonley-urges-immigration-service
Obviously Spoonley hasn’t noticed that Chinese are into tourism at every level. He hasn’t actually had to drop off and pick up at Queenstown’s Steamer Wharf or look for a bus park in Queenstown. Flying first class to conferences where he gets to talk about a tolerant New Zealand is more up his alley.
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The given explanation of Air New Zealand’s turn back would mean that AirNZ is grossly under resourcing of internal functions, so if its true we can expect them to make the front pages for more serious events over the next couple of years.
By previous generations standards, the conduct of the PRC would make trade with them a criminal act and as currently being demonstrated such position would have been completely rational.
Taking a long term view, its probably never going to be cheaper to move in that direction not that we are going to see anything like that without some political upheaval.
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I see that there is a consistent release of op-ed pieces now from media establishment figures / commentators on this topic which seem to be making a few key points:
1. Senior ministers need to get to China now, prostrate themselves and kowtow to get things to the way they were
2. This is essential to prevent further bullying in the future (rather than perhaps you know spending their time on making NZ less reliant on the bully)
3. The only New Zealand values worth protecting are a buccaneering attitude and willingness to step over your own grandmother to make a buck (a good ol’fashioned colonial / vassal state mentality)
Disappointing but unsurprising unfortunately.
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No need to prostrate just allow Huawei 5G to go ahead. Problem gone.
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same thing……
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No getgreatstuff, problem deeply embedded in our most sensitive communications and IT structures. Even the former National Minister for the Security Services commented before he left Parliament he agreed from his knowledge of the issue with the GCSB decision to ban Huawei. Appeasement never pays.
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I was looking forward to my 5G data streaming. If a system is open it is hacker prone but who wants to go back to proprietary unhackable systems that no one can use easily anyway? Facebook, Google etc collects my personal data and use it to their own profit goals anyway. Security is a government and sensitive cmpanies issue and they will just need to up their game and their respective security firewalls. Can’t keep chinese technology from moving ahead just because the US competition is so far behind.
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Obviously New Zealand, as a minor international player, seldom has a particularly strong hand to play in negotiating better terms and conditions for our trading environment. The key factor at the moment is that the US – China relationship which is going through a particularly rough patch.
New Zealand has vital markets in both states and the New Zealand Government has recently increased its diplomatic presence in China to ensure that Beijing is well-informed on the government’s position. But that is about as far as we can take it.
You may have heard Robert Patman, Prof of Political Science at Otago University on today’s morning report. He made some very useful comments about how we should handle the relationship with Beijing.
Of course China as a one-party authoritarian state is used to getting its own way at home. But when working on the international scene things are a little different. I think China knows this and I also think that if our case is clearly stated Beijing is smart enough to listen to it.
Somewhere a reference was made to the Air New Zealand flight that had to turn back after 4 to half hours into its flight to China. My understanding is that ANZ used incorrect coding and in these times of indiscriminate terrorism no country – particularly a bureaucratically authoritarian country like China – will want incorrectly identified aircraft in their airspace.
Politics and international relations as I’m sure you know is a complex business and requires a high degree of flexibility to work effectively within it. In my view, on balance, New Zealand does a pretty good job.
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and?
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“Pandering” 🙂
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Re: “I have some more sympathy for tourism operators – who mostly are operating in an open market.”
Excluding Air New Zealand around five companies seem to dominate the industry in New Zealand especially the South Island, many of them appear to me to be essentially parasitic, gaining monopoly commercial access to our National Parks etc. All are the beneficiaries of Tourism New Zealand promotional spending. Why New Zealand feels the need to subsidies these very large dominant companies and to continue to allow them to game the system to obtain monopoly rights within National Parks etc. All to generate low paying work mainly undertaken by imported labour. They do not operate in an open market- they gain and exploit local monopolies. Eg Shotover jet has a monopoly. Ultimate Hikes are the monoply provider of luxury hotels into our National Parks etc.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/01/21/408787/ambitious-changes-planned-for-milford-sound
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Useful reminder. Of course, it isn’t true for accommodation or food and beverage providers, who probably account for the largest chunk of tourism export earnings.
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Click to access tnz_annual_report_2018.pdf
It looks like government pitches in $117 Million a year and the industry contributes nothing by way of a levy to Tourism New Zealand’s Budget. It is interesting that potato growers and processors pay a levy to their promotional organisation and get nothing from government all for a billion dollar industry.
Why does everyone else pay for tourism rather then the industry itself?
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One argument – I’m not saying it is conclusive – is that it is easy to identify who is a potato grower or processor and much harder to identify who is a tourism exporter (eg probably every business in Queenstown is to some extent or other, but to what extent is a restaurant/cafe/motel in Wellington or Dunedin an exporter? One could come up with crude rules of thumb, but they’d inevitably be unfair to some.
Having said that, I’d happily wind back govt spending here and in various other notionally tourist related areas (notably film subsidies).
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Does tha $117 Million per year include any contribution from ATEED? It seems to me that ATEED is either duplicating or competing with NZ Tourist agencies.
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ATEED is funded mainly by Auckland Council ratepayers. There may be other sponsors to specific programs like the government.
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That gush gush report is very much an employers document. I don’t believe the 95% believe tourism is important means diddly squat.
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