I’m probably the sort of person the National Party used to count on voting for them.   National was the only party I was ever a member of, the only party I ever canvassed for. There were family connections, and there were the founding principles, every one of which I identified with (and do still).   Even in Wellington, middle-aged conservatives might reasonably have been assumed to support National, even if (at times) through gritted teeth.  One of those founding principles talked, perhaps slightly quaintly, of “countering Communism”, and it seemed to be something taken fairly seriously throughout the post-war decades.  There was a suggestion of some values; a suggestion of things that mattered beyond just the next business deal.  Friends and allies, people and countries with whom we shared those values, seemed to count too.

But over the last couple of decades, New Zealand political figures, and the National Party ones in particular, seem to have binned any sense of decency, integrity, or values when it comes to Chinese Communist Party ruled China. I don’t suppose that individually most of them have much sympathy for PRC policies and practices, but they just show no sign of caring any longer.  Deals, donations, and indifference seem to be the order of the day.

Over the last couple of years the depths the party, its leaders and MPs, have been plumbing have become more visible.  In 2017, in government, they signed up to a Memorandum of Understanding with the PRC on the Belt and Road Initiative.  In that document they –  Simon Bridges as signatory –  committed to “promote” the “fusion of civilisations”.      Plenty of people will probably dismiss such statements as “meaningless”, the stuff of official communiques.  But decent people –  under no duress whatever –  don’t sign up to things suggesting that today’s equivalent of Nazi-ruled Germany is a normal and decent regime.  Of course, they would probably dispute the parallel, but that’s just willed deliberate blindness.

Later that same year we learned that the National Party had had a former PLA intelligence officer, Communist Party member, sitting in their parliamentary caucus.  It seems to be generally accepted that Jian Yang, of such a questionable background, is one of the party’s largest fundraisers.   Presumably the leaders (Key and Goodfellow) were aware of his past, but lets be generous and assume that most of the caucus was as unaware as the public.    But for the past 18 months, everyone has known.    They also know –  because Jian Yang acknowledged as much –  that he deliberately misrepresented his past to get into New Zealand, telling us that Beijing had told him (and others in his position) to do so.   Breathtakingly, there is no sign that official agencies in New Zealand have done anything about those admissions, but National is now out of office so I guess one can’t blame them for that.

But what the National Party –  leader, president, MPs, and all those holding office in the party –  is responsible for is the fact that Jian Yang still sits in Parliament, still sits in the National caucus, is still a National spokesman (on a couple of minor portfolios), with the express support of successive leaders, and (apparently) in ongoing business relationships with the party president (he who trots of to Beijing to praise the regime and its leader).   And not one MP, not one national councillor, no other officeholder –  not one –  has broken ranks, and been willing to openly question (or deplore) just what has gone on.  Doing so might, I suppose, jeopardise their individual futures.  But values are the things you are willing to risk for, to pay some price for.    Rumour hath it that some people within the party aren’t entirely comfortable, but so what, if you aren’t willing to do, or say, anything?

A few months ago we had the egregious former Minister of Trade, and foreign affairs spokesperson, Todd McClay plumbing new depths.    In an interview with Stuff, he championed the PRC regime interpretation of the mass internment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, noting that

“the existence and purpose of vocational training centres is a domestic matter for the Chinese Government.”

If he’d just kept quiet at least there might have been some doubt about his decency, but he opened his mouth and left no doubt.  He was spinning for the CCP regime in Beijing.

Since then even the regime in Beijing has more or less admitted that, of course, that line isn’t true.  But we’ve heard nothing more –  and certainly no apology –  from Mr McClay or his leaders.

And, of course, every so often the National Party leader Simon Bridges pops up if there is ever the slightest sign that anyone in the current government is expressing even the mildest reservations about the regime in Beijing.  Never mind that the Defence strategy document stated no more (considerably less) than was obvious to blind Freddy, it was too much for Mr Bridges.  Never mind that reservations about Huawei seem to be increasingly widely shared by governments and intelligence agencies across the western world, it might lead to furrowed brows and discontent in Beijing, and we couldn’t have that could we?   Never mind too that, in government and in practice it is hard to conceive that things would have been any different on that particular score under National –  I don’t suppose even National is quite so far gone in Beijing’s thrall that they would simply walk away from Australia, the United States, a growing number of other western countries, and what appears to be assessments of our own intelligence services.    No sense at all in anything Bridges –  or any other National Party figure – says that the PRC itself has changed: bad as the regime always was, it has now become worse.

But it was comments the other day from National’s third-ranked member and finance spokesperson, Amy Adams, that really left me open-mouthed in astonishment.  Both at what she said –  even if it wasn’t far from what had seemed to be the National stance in practice –  but also at the lack of any other coverage of, or follow-up to, those remarks.    In an interview with NBR, (behind a paywall but here) we are told

National’s finance spokeswoman Amy Adams has accused the government of putting the economy at risk by offending China.

“The first thing is you don’t p[…] off your major trading partner and, let’s be really clear about this, China is our single biggest trading partner.”

Quite extraordinary.

One could clear the small things out the way first. For example, governments don’t trade with China, firms in New Zealand trade with firms in the PRC.  Sure, governments set some of the terms on which that trade occurs, but government isn’t a business.

One might also note that if the PRC is the largest “trading partner” for New Zealand firms, it is very similar in size to Australia in terms of total New Zealand trade.  Until about five years ago, the EU in total accounted for more of New Zealand’s trade than the PRC.  Australia remains by far the largest source of foreign investment in New Zealand.     And these days exports to each of our largest “trading partners” –  in an economy (New Zealand) that doesn’t trade much with the rest of world by international standards – account for about 5 per cent of  GDP, in total.  For many decades, a much larger proportion of our GDP was accounted for by trade with the UK.

Oh, and a large proportion of New Zealand exports (not all of course) are commodities, and if not sold in one market they will be sold in some other part of the global market.   PRC babies seem unlikely to stop drinking infant formula.

But what really staggered me was the bald sense in which National’s finance spokesperson appears to think that the interests and priorities of foreign governments are what should matter most to our government. Not our values, not our people.  On her telling, we’d never annoy Australia about anything (apple import cases to the WTO, illegal migrants/asylum-seekers on Nauru, New Zealand citizens being deported from Australia).    We’d never have taken on France over nuclear-testing (at a time when the UK was entering the EU, and trade access to our largest market was substantially in danger).  We’d never have fought for Imperial Preference for our exports to the UK in the 1930s.  We’d never have banned nuclear ships (the US wasn’t our largest trading partner, but the US and EU together were hugely important markets, and we relied on the UK government (Thatcher) to fight our corner for EU market access).  The then Australia government wasn’t best-pleased with that New Zealand policy choice either.   And more generally –  and much more dominant – Canada would never ever stand for itself on anything that involved the United States, or Ireland vis-a-vis the UK.  I suspect Denmark and the Netherlands had had significant trade ties to Germany pre-1940, but they didn’t exactly put out the welcome mat to Hitler.  Southern African countries chose to limit trade with Rhodesia, and confront South Africa, because they considered they had a just cause.  And so on.    (Note that I’m not endorsing all these causes, just noting the willingness of governments to upset their closest “trading partner”.)

Of course, this almost certainly isn’t what Ms Adams believes at all.   Presumably as a senior minister she had no problem at all with the fact that at times we had, and have, open differences with Australia.  In any relationship, no matter how important, there are going to be differences from time to time, and in international relations governments (at least democratic ones) aren’t supposed to act for themselves, or even for small favoured groups, but for the citizenry as a whole.

Instead, the Adams approach –  presumably endorsed by her leader –  is about a particular thuggish regime. It seems to be that we should defer entirely to Beijing’s prickly style and never ever do or say anything that might upset them, never display any self-respect, and simply engage in either anticipatory compliance or abject penitent submission.  Worse, apparently we should even make excuses for them –  or retail their propaganda lines, as per Todd McClay.  It is classic domestic abuse situation, and yet championed by someone who aspires to be a senior minister of a free country, perhaps even aspires to be the Prime Minister.   In fact, someone who was the Minister of Justice, who led legislative attempts to respond to the family violence problems.  I’m quite sure it wasn’t her advice to victims –  “oh, don’t upset him…ever”.    So why does she propose that our foreign policy towards the international abuser par excellence be essentially just that?  Act that way and all you do is encourage the abuser, and lock yourself further into the cycle of abuse, humiliation and loss of any sort of self-respect.

Of course, the difference here is that Adams ask us (citizens) to bear the abuse and humiliation –  leaders who remain silent in the face of evil, leaders who won’t stand up for the integrity of the system, and even spend our money to run PR-front organisations to champion the pro-Beijing perspective –  all to benefit a few specific businesses that have (consciously and knowingly) over-exposed themselves to a thuggish regime, and the substantial flow of donations to their own political parties.    Politicians like Adams simply encourage the over-exposure, and encourage the false subservience of victimhood.   If our businesses were dealing with organised crime, or with shonky people who didn’t pay their bills, we’d either insist or encourage them to cut their exposures.  If you deal with the Mafia you are on your own –  in fact, society will shun you, not tolerate you asking for us to pander to the leaders.  But when it is the PRC –  organised coercive threat if ever there was such –  our leaders simply want us to defer, and complain when their opponents show any sign of not being quite deferential enough to the bully.  And they simply let evil pass by, and in so doing make themselves complicit with –  and thus partly responsible themselves –  for the evil.

In his Beijing-deferential interview on the Herald website the other day, David Mahon tried to frame the current PRC upset with New Zealand as “the Chinese see it as akin to infidelity”.    What a sickening image, but perhaps one that brings us right around to the abused-spouse parallel.  New Zealanders made no vows to Beijing – although perhaps our craven political leaders did –  but when the merest squeaks are heard, the abuser – freshly drunk on newfound power – seems to feel free to attempt to squash and silence, while politicians, lobby groups and business interests cheer on not the abused “spouse” but the abuser.   New Zealand “leaders ” have been among the most sycophantic and compliant anywhere in the western world, so perhaps there is a sense that they can’t afford to let us get away with some renewed self-respect.  That, after all, might encourage others to think and act for themselves, for the values of their peoples.   Better to foster the illusion –  assisted by local politicians and academics –  that the PRC holds our prosperity in its hand.

It simply doesn’t. It never did.

But that’s New Zealand politics, that seems to be today’s National Party. It is sickening.

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.