In recent days, there has been quite a bit of coverage of issues around the New Zealand’s government’s approach to the PRC.

There was, for example, last week’s trailer for the Australian 60 Minutes piece on New Zealand and China, which excited a great deal of scorn (and coverage) for what was, after all, a teaser to get people to watch a longer programme. It wasn’t clear what riled people more – the (not new but) clever play on words suggestion about “New Xi-land”, quotes from Mike Hosking, or what but the “elite” reaction was quite remarkably hostile.

As it turned out the actual 60 Minutes programme (you can watch it here) as something of a damp squib. Sure there was the nauseating spectacle of Michael Barnett, Executive Director of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, talking of being “friends with benefits” with the PRC (complete with the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” nuance), and openly asserting that whatever the PRC did on the human rights was really its concern only, and not something for anyone else to worry about. Presumably he believes what he is saying, but not the harshest critic of the Jacinda Ardern or Judith Collins would suggest they held that view. And from the Australian perspective, the programme makers seemed to start with the line that the Australian economy was paying a high price for their government’s stand, while New Zealand was prospering…..but with not a shred of evidence examined for those claims. At a macro level, the two economies look very similar right now, with unemployment rates post-Covid now back down not too far from late 2019 levels (Australia possibly a touch closer than New Zealand). And some of the programme even seemed quite sympathetic to the common, but fallacious, view that somehow New Zealand is less able to take a stand, due to size or other unpersuasive reasons. There was, of course, the clip of the 60 Minutes journalist asking Ardern whether she ever held back in making comments on China because of fears about trade. She again claimed that she never did – and surely no one serious in Australia, New Zealand, or China believes her – but 60 Minutes made no effort to unpick that claim either (which, as I noted in a post recently, if true must then mean she is really almost entirely indifferent to, and has feel no serious moral unease about, what China does – and I don’t believe that either). There was nothing about the New Zealand government’s reluctance to call out PRC attempted economic coercion of Australia, nothing about its refusal to criticise the PRC for the arbitrary detention and recent secret trial of an Australian citizen. And, of course, nothing about how weak both main parties here are on issues like political donations or CCP-connected political figures.

Of somewhat more importance was the political theatre in Queenstown yesterday, culminating in a long and wordy communique, in which Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern were falling over themselves to suggest that there was no real difference between them when it came to China. Both had their reasons no doubt.

Here is what they had to say.

First, on “coercion”

37. The Prime Ministers affirmed their strong support for open rules-based trade that is based on market principles. They expressed concern over harmful economic coercion and agreed to work with partners to tackle security and economic challenges.

39. The Prime Ministers reiterated their shared commitment to support an Indo-Pacific region of sovereign, resilient and prosperous states, with robust regional institutions and strong respect for international rules and norms, and where sovereign states can pursue their interests free from coercion.

Those references to coercion were new (weren’t in last year’s communique) but notice how weak they are. The first reference (para 37) is not even in the “Indo-Pacific and Global security” section, and neither reference explicitly names the range of steps the PRC has taken against Australia. Since we can reasonably expect that Australia would have welcomed strong and explicit support, we can only assume that New Zealand wasn’t up for it. That reflects very poorly on the New Zealand government – most especially in a joint communique with the Australians. Senior figures in the US Adminstration have made (much) stronger statements than that, specifically about the Australian situation.

Then there was the South China Sea

42. The Prime Ministers expressed serious concern over developments in the South China Sea, including the continued militarisation of disputed features and an intensification of destabilising activities at sea. The Prime Ministers further underscored the importance of freedom of navigation and overflight. They emphasised that maritime zones must accord with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and called on all parties to respect and implement decisions rendered through UNCLOS dispute settlement mechanisms. The Prime Ministers reiterated the importance of the South China Sea Code of Conduct being consistent with international law, particularly UNCLOS; not prejudicing the rights and interests of third parties; and supporting existing, inclusive regional architecture.

Which seemed quite good. I hadn’t heard Ardern or Mahuta say anything at all about the South China Sea – it certainly wasn’t in the list of issues they mentioned in their respective recent China speeches – but it turns out most of this language was also in the previous communique from 15 months ago, with just a couple of (useful) modifications. And – read it again – note that the PRC is not even named. It is good to see, but you get the impression that it was one of those issues that mattered to the Australians and in putting together communiques there has to be some given and take (I’m assuming Ardern’s side is the one keen on the strange “circular economy” paragraph that also survives from one year to another).

Then we got a paragraph that was not there at all last year

43. The Prime Ministers expressed deep concern over developments that limit the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong and undermine the high degree of autonomy China guaranteed Hong Kong until 2047 under the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The Prime Ministers also expressed grave concerns about the human rights situation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and called upon China to respect the human rights of the Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities and to grant the United Nations and other independent observers meaningful and unfettered access to the region.

I suppose it is good stuff as far as it goes, which is not very far. On Hong Kong, for example, there is no denunciation of the growing number of political prisoners or – in this week of Tiananmen Square remembrance – of the heavy punishments people of Hong Kong are threatened with if they seek to participate in (long-established) vigils). And as for the Uighur comments, they are less pointed that the recent resolution of the New Zealand Parliament which – if it did not name China – did refer to “severe human rights abuses”.

It is also interesting that in the next two paragraphs the two leaders could call out Myanmar much more directly

They condemned the violence being perpetrated against the people of Myanmar and called on the military regime to exercise restraint, refrain from further violence, release all those arbitrarily detained, and engage in dialogue.

Which is good stuff, but might almost equally be said of China….except the thought would never cross Ardern’s mind (perhaps the Australians would not have been keen either).

And what is missing completely is also interesting – no mention of PRC threats to Taiwan, military incursions etc, and not even (that I could see) a mention of the desirability of Taiwan participating in the WHO.

Oh, and there was also this

41. The Prime Ministers agreed to continue working collaboratively, bilaterally, and with our partners in the Indo-Pacific region, to uphold sovereignty in an era of increasing strategic competition. The Prime Ministers reaffirmed their resolve and shared respective approaches to countering foreign interference and agreed the importance of building resilience across all sectors of society, including in education, infrastructure, research, electoral processes, media and communities.

But that is just boilerplate communique-speak, with no substance whatever. It covers over the fact that the New Zealand government has been reluctant to even speak of foreign interference/influence risks – seen most recently in the belated emergence of news of the secret National/Labour deal to clear about the headline risks around Jian Yang and Raymond Huo, while neither party leader will even front with the public on the issue.

The different stance between New Zealand and the 13 western countries (not the Five Eyes) on the WHO study on Covid origins was also quietly swept under the carpet.

So for all the bonhomie and smooth words, it didn’t really amount to much. As I noted earlier, it suited both sides now to paper over the cracks and pretend to a commonality of view. There is a line afoot that only the PRC itself benefits from divergence between western countries (or specifically New Zealand and Australia) on these issues, but that is an argument for more substantive alignment, not for pretending to a commonality that just doesn’t exist. Read the speeches (Ardern, Mahuta), watch the interviews (eg O’Connor): this is a government that simply has no stomach to seriously call out the PRC. Perhaps Damien O’Connor’s respect was “a mistake” – as he now concedes – but it was a slip of the tongue only in that he shouldn’t have said it publicly, not that the idea had never previously occurred to him and a word he’d never previously thought of slipped out. Or repeated references from senior ministers to “respecting” the PRC. Decent people don’t treat with respect regimes responsible for (at least) “severe human rights abuses”.

The appropriate benchmark here is not what Australia says or does (although the consensus across Australian politics is clearly in a quite different place to that in New Zealand – see the recent speech from the ALP’s Penny Wong) but on what is right and proper. There are areas where Australia itself isn’t as strong as it could be – one could think of parliamentary resolutions, autonomous sanctions regimes, the Winter Olympics, and so on.

But the New Zealand government’s stance continues to fall a long way short. Why will the Prime Minister not explain why her government scrapped the Autonomous Sanctions bill that had sat on Parliament’s order paper for several years, with no replacement? Why does her government continue to claim that she will be guided by the UN on “genocide” declarations re the Uighurs, when she knows that China is a veto-carrying permanent member of the UN Security Council. Why does she never speak openly about the South China Sea (an evolving and worsening situation, currently directly threatening the Philippines)? Why is she never willing to highlight threats to Taiwan? Why will she not front up about the Jian Yang/Raymond Huo deal? Why does her party keep recruiting ethnic Chinese candidates with strong United Front ties? Why will she do nothing serious about reforming electoral donations laws (even as multiple court cases and SFO investigations are underway)? Why was she so loathe to comment at the time of the break-ins to Anne-Marie Brady’s house and office (let alone when other NZ universities sought to have Brady silenced)? Why is she not willing to speak out about the Winter Olympics – does she really think the Olympics should be held in a country responsible for “severe human rights abuses”? Why is she not taking any lead to get PRC/CCP-funded and recruited/screened people out of our schools, instead funding Chinese language learning properly ourselves? And so on.

I was going to include in this post some thoughts on, and responses to, a new article in the Victoria University publications Policy Quarterly by Anne-Marie Brady on the New Zealand government’s approach to the PRC. It is a very generous treatment, about the “significant progress” she claims has been made under the Ardern governments of the last four years. I didn’t find it very convincing at all, but I guess it must have been welcomed in the Beehive and in MFAT.

In many respects one doesn’t even need to read the speeches of government ministers on the PRC to know the stance they are taking; one need only look at the audiences they choose to speak to.

Nanaia Mahuta’s speech a couple of weeks ago was to the New Zealand China Council, the heavily government-funded body set up to help out the China-focused bits of the business community, champion ties with the PRC, and never ever say anything critical of the regime. And yesterday the Prime Minister chose to share a platform with the PRC Ambassador – host last week of the egregious propaganda event in defence of the regime’s record in Xinjiang – in speaking to the China Business Summit – a commercial event organised by one of the council members of the China Council, and heavily oriented to trying to do lots (and lots) of business with PRC entities. Invited speakers tend not to set out to upset their hosts, and in this case both lots of hosts would clearly prefer business above all, and a government operating in the service of those specific business interests. And that is, largely, what they get. From accounts of yesterday’s event, only the visiting Australian speaker (former senior DFAT official) appeared to offer a discouraging word, a dose of geopolitical realism on the nature of the regime. From our political “elite”. leaders past and present, more or less crass (more in John Key’s case) opportunism and spin.

There were, perhaps, a couple of things to be said in favour of the Prime Minister’s speech, at least relative to Mahuta’s. There was no invocation of assorted deities or suggestion that she herself was one (“I bestow a life-force upon this gathering“), and the weird taniwha stuff was nowhere to be seen. More substantively, whereas Mahuta talked several times about the government’s plans to “respect” the PRC, that word appeared not once in the Prime Minister’s speech. At the margin, her framing seemed slightly less gruesome, even if – like some abused wife unable or unwilling to break free – she keeps talking, of one of the most heinous regimes on the planet, of how “areas of difference need not define a relationship”.

We are told that the Labour caucus is this morning going to discuss its approach to the ACT notice of motion to declare the situation in Xinjiang a genocide. Perhaps they will surprise us by allowing a debate, perhaps they will really surprise us and vote for it, or some substantively similar preferred government wording. But there was not the slightest hint of a change of tone or stance in yesterday’s speech. Here is the whole of what the Prime Minister said on the Xinjiang situation

We have commented publicly about our grave concerns regarding the human rights situation of Uyhgurs in Xinjiang. 

I have raised these concerns with senior Chinese leaders on a number of occasions, including with the Guandong Party Secretary in September 2018, and then with China’s leaders when I visited in 2019. 

Note first that all of these references are in the past tense. But more importantly, not how she describes the situation. Like Mahuta ( “the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang”) it is depressingly neutral language (“the human rights situation”), and “grave” is only used to qualify the extent of her concerns. It isn’t much better on Hong Kong where she will only go as far as to refer to “negative developments with regard to the rights, freedoms and autonomy of the people of Hong Kong”. It is the sort of language bureaucrats and MFAT diplomats love.

Oh, and do note the observations about when the Prime Minister has allegedly raised these concerns previously. It is a bit of a stretch to take seriously the 2018 episode, when after that same meeting we were told that the Prime Minister and the Guangdong Party Secretary had agreed to strengthen “party to party exchanges”, and we know how effusive her own party president (and the National’s) was being about Xi and the regime at the time. It must have been a fearsome telling off….or not.

The contrast is striking with the stance taken by a growing number of legislators around the world. From the Prime Minister’s own side of politics, for example, take this recent statement from US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi

“The Biden Administration’s coordinated sanctions on China are a strong and resounding step to hold China accountable for its barbaric atrocities against the Uyghur people.  These sanctions make absolutely clear that America and the international community stand as one to defend the rights and dignity of the Uyghur people from China’s abuse.

“China’s persecution of the Uyghur people – including its imprisonment of more than one million people in labor camps and the torture and extrajudicial killings of many more – is an outrage that challenges the conscience of the world and that demands action. 

I’m pretty sure that not once has Ardern ever uttered those sorts of words.

One could go on. The media like to report the line – also in Mahuta’s speech – that

As a significant power, the way China treats its partners is important to us.

Code, or so it is suggested, for “we don’t really like what the PRC is trying to do to Australia or Canada”. But what feeble words, so vague and general they aren’t going to bother the PRC, or given aid and comfort to anyone else.

Unlike, for example, President Biden and Prime Minister Suga, our so-called leaders are too feeble, scared of their own shadow, to even name economic coercion for what it is.

President Biden and Prime Minister Suga exchanged views on the impact of China’s actions on peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region and the world, and shared their concerns over Chinese activities that are inconsistent with the international rules-based order, including the use of economic and other forms of coercion.

And so it went, No reference to the wider and brutal domestic repressions, nothing about the South or East China Seas, nothing about the threats to Taiwan, and nothing (of course) about the PRC’s influence and intimidation activities here.

But we did get a new line from the Prime Minister yesterday, although only in the question and answer session for which there is no transcript. I first saw it reported this way

And a Reuters story reported it thus

When asked if New Zealand would risk trade punishment with China, as did Australia, to uphold values, Ardern said: “It would be a concern to anyone in New Zealand if the consideration was ‘Do we speak on this or are we too worried of economic impacts?'”

So we are left with a choice. Either the Prime Minister is speaking the truth, and she is shocked, nay scandalised, that anyone could even think that economic considerations played a part in her government’s choice to say little. In which case we would have to conclude that she and her government really have no values and principles when it comes to anything to do with China. I’m not an Ardern fan at all, but I simply don’t believe that. But the alternative interpretation is that yesterday’s comment was just an outright lie, made up to get round an awkward question. There really isn’t a middle ground I can see. And no serious observer is going to believe that she was telling the truth.

Her government’s stance is craven and cowardly, and all too many people – especially in the business community – commend her for it, even if they’d use different words to describe the policy (perhaps “realistic” or invoking that vapid cover for opting out of the world, “an independent foreign policy”).

Foremost among those champions of turning a blind eye, or just trading eyes wide open, were the former Prime Ministers John Key and Helen Clark, who also spoke at yesterday’s event. Both have a record of cosying up to the PRC regime, in Key’s case more recently as a lobbyist for the US company Comcast in advancing its business interests in China – not a role you get if you are known to be a robust defender of human rights, the rule of law and so on. Now perhaps in fairness to both, when they were in office (perhaps especially Clark) the regime was perhaps a little less egregious (and less evidently so) than it is now. But if times have changed, their approaches do not appear to have. Indeed, in his Politik newsletter this morning, Richard Harman – who has previously provided a platform for the PRC Ambassador’s propaganda – described Key and Clark as “taking direct aim” at the government and calling it back from a concern about the PRC and to a true “independent foreign policy”,

The weirdest of the comments from the former PMs came from Key. He was quoted as suggesting that heightened concern about the PRC was really all Trump’s doing (this was a bad thing) and not something New Zealand should get caught up with. What isn’t clear is whether he believed this nonsense (see Biden or Pelosi, for example) or was also just making things up on the day (or which interpretation reflects more poorly on him). He went on to suggest that really we are much more likely to have an influence on the PRC if we are good friends with them and only ever raise concerns privately. This time, not even he can believe that, but it is a good line to use to sway those who want to be swayed, and don’t want the government doing or saying anything. No one supposes that anything any democratic country – least of all tiny New Zealand – says is going to deflect Xi from the regime’s approach to Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Falun Gong, religious and political freedom, the South China Sea, or whatever. It isn’t as if these are little misunderstandings and a good friend can helpfully get them back on the right course. It is that not speaking – playing along and acting as if the PRC is some normal country run by decent people – directly serves the regime’s interest.

These New Zealand political figures really are despicable, and never worse than when chanting the mantra of the “independent foreign policy”, an empty phrase that at present just seems an excuse for moral abdication, burying the values and principles most New Zealanders champion in some hobbit hole in the south seas, free-riding in the hope that the trade, the trade, can be kept up a little longer, and life not made tougher for firms that voluntarily choose to sup with the devil.

In many ways, I thought the best piece on yesterday’s attempt at circling the wagons was one that appeared on the Guardian Australia website by Bryce Edwards.

It was pretty much the line I’ve run here, that both speeches were carefully crafted efforts to look and sound – to the general New Zealand market -a bit tougher than usual (and ministers have even found one or two erstwhile sceptics to suggest a real shift in tone), while actually saying little or nothing that would disconcert Beijing, and not being remotely in line with the global shift in opinion on the threat the PRC increasingly poses. Edwards – from the left – appears to think this a good approach, going so far as to note that “[Beijing] will be very happy with today’s speech”

He ends with an observation that seems, sadly, mostly accurate about New Zealand domestic opinion

What foreign observers might see as Ardern kowtowing to Beijing, will be seen domestically as her successfully swimming in turbulent global waters between China and the west.

Helped along, of course. by a National Party that at its upper levels is quite as dreadful on the PRC as Ardern and Mahuta.

(On the National Party, Monday’s Politik newsletter reported that at the National Party’s northern regional conference at the weekend party members “voted overwhelmingly” to call for an inquiry into CCP/PRC interference in New Zealand”. Assuming this is true – I’ve not seen it reported anywhere else – it seems quite significant, in a party led by Judith Collins and Peter Goodfellow, both with a record of being all-in with Beijing, And yet, welcome as the call might be, one couldn’t help thinking that any such inquiry might start with – or be preceded by – full disclosure by the National Party about, for example, what it knew about Jian Yang when they put him into Parliament and why they kept him on and promoted him after his past became known, about ties with CCP figure Yikun Zhang, and so on.)

Following on from her speech last week, and the (rather overblown) controversy her subsequent remarks about the use of the Five Eyes grouping gave rise to, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta fronted up for extended interviews with the two weekend TV currrent affairs shows.

I wrote about the speech in a post last Tuesday. Rereading the speech itself, and the post, I’d stand by what I said then. It was dreadful – whether the bizarre folk religion stuff, the absence of any evidence of any serious framework for thinking about the growing threat the PRC poses, and just for being more of the same old approach of being very very reluctant to ever openly name the evil done in the name of the CCP and its PRC. It is not that what was said was new: it wasn’t, it was just another example of the craven approach adopted by both sides of New Zealand politics, as evidenced by the support offered for the Minister’s speech by senior National Party figures.

I have read alternative perspectives, but don’t find them persuasive. Professor Anne-Marie Brady, for example, seemed to bend over backwards to defend the Minister and the government’s approach, suggesting of the contents of the speech

For New Zealand this was strong stuff. 

Count me unpersuaded because even if were true that the contents of the speech represented any movement by the government (and I think the evidence doesn’t really support that claim), starting points matter. The New Zealand government, backed by the Opposition, remains scared of its own shadow when it comes to the PRC, and simply fails to engage with the New Zealand public about the nature of the issue and risks. It won’t even engage in serious reform of our electoral donations law, even as investigations and criminal charges proceed about donations from CCP-linked figures. Neither party appears willing to state simply that it will not take donations from CCP-linked figures, let alone refuse to welcome such people as MPs.

Even on Anzac Day weekend, New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs chooses not to make a simple clear statement that she regards the PRC’s attempted economic coercion of Australia as unacceptable (or the regime’s hostage-taking of Australian and Canadian citizens). It is like a morals-free zone, presumably backed by the Prime Minister.

But it was interesting to listen to the Minister’s two interviews. I thought the Newshub interview was much superior – somewhat more searching (although there was a lot left unaddressed), but also more revealing (in a good way as well). Mahuta was put under some pressure both by the previous interview (a New Zealand citizen of Uighur origins) and by the House of Commons vote last week declaring the PRC approach to the Uighurs as a “genocide”. I didn’t think she emerged well from the interview, but (to her credit) she was finally willing to (more than once) use the word “atrocities” to describe what the PRC has done in Xinjiang – so different from the neutral “treatment of the Uighurs” in her (so we are told) carefully-drafted speech, or to the smart-alecky way she answered a journalist’s question after her speech. There must have been some rethink in the Beehive as the week went on, but only time will tell whether she is willing to use the line again.

But it was still mostly a line that consisted of playing for time, minimising things, avoid hard questions about New Zealand government choices, and so on. Challenged on the “genocide” issue she said she would be “willing to receive advice on that”, but gave no sign that (for example) she had already, or was now, actively seeking such advice. In other words it was clever line to fend off a journalist on the day, not a statement of substance. She says she is all for an independent UN observer to visit Xinjiang, but refuses to engage with the extensive published research of private scholars, or the judgements that various other governments or legislatures have reached.

She was asked about whether New Zealand should impose sanctions on, for example, imports from Xinjiang. She responded that New Zealand did not have an autonomous sanctions regime, without even addressing the point Prof Robert Ayson has made that New Zealand could impose travel bans (as it has in respect of Myanmar officials). Sadly, she was not grilled on why her government chose to scrap the Autonomous Sanctions Bill that had sat for some years on Parliament’s order paper. The thing about having an absolute majority in Parliament is that what does, or doesn’t, happen in Parliament is entirely your responsibility – and if Mahuta is not a top-ranked minister, she does sit in Cabinet and must have the confidence of the Prime Minister.

Oh, and we heard again several times from the MInister – unprompted – the claim that we – well, her government I suppose – wants to be “respectful” of the PRC. This is the same regime that she’d just said was committing repeated atrocities……

And one really had it confirmed that she was squirming and pandering when she was asked whether she thought she was on the “right side of history” as regards the PRC and Xinjiang in particular, and all the interviewer got in response was waffle. Surely there is only one answer any politician of decency and integrity should give to a question of that sort?

As with her speech, in her interviews she repeatedly gave the impression that the government was a trading body. It is a language and mindset that tends to suffuse bureaucracies and politicians, but there is an important distinction to be drawn. China – the PRC – is not “our largest trade partner”. Rather, individual New Zealand firms choose to buy and sell from/to firms in the PRC. Firms in the PRC may be more or less under the thumb of the Party/state, but here it is wholly a matter of private choice. And those choices – protecting them – are not a matter for the government. In fairness, to the Minister we did get a few repetitions of the old (many decades old) line about diversification and resilience, but never once a suggestion (even in muted language) that if you – your firm – chooses to sup with the devil you should bring a long spoon. More specifically, if you trade in a country that attempts economic coercion, that is really your choice, your problem, not that of the government or the rest of us. Governments are supposed to represent the wider interests and values of New Zealanders, not the business interests of a few firms and universities.

The New Zealand government’s approach to the PRC seems craven, fearful, and almost entirely mercenary (sure they make a few comments, and the PRC presumably lets them get away with it because (a) they rightly interpret the spirit (do and say as little as possible as feebly as possible, and (b) it suits them to drive wedges between New Zealand and other democratic countries. But the media scrutiny really isn’t much better. I’m pretty sure that in the course of those two extended interviews we heard and saw:

• no challenge to the Minister to state simply that attempted economic coercion of Australia is unacceptable and that we stand with Australia (and no attempt to contrast New Zealand’s silence with the recent Biden-Suga communique)
• no challenge to the Minister to state whether hostage-taking by the PRC is acceptable,
• extraordinarily, no mention at all of Taiwan,
• no questions about the PRC activities in the South and East China Sea (including the current standoff involving the Philippines),
• no grilling of the Minister on the fate of the Autonomous Sanctions bill, why the government seems opposed to having one, and the past lines from the Minister that she wants UN-led responses (when she knows the PRC has a veto),
• nothing on Hong Kong and the recent prison sentences handed out to leading respected figures in the democracy movement,
• nothing on forced organ transplants,
• nothing on intensifying religious and political repression,
• nothing on the WInter Olympics in Beijing (will government officials or ministers or diplomats attend), will government money help fund New Zealand teams’ participation, should athletes go (to a place where “atrocities” are being committed on an ongoing basis as a matter of Party/state policy),
• nothing on the sluggish and weak New Zealand response to the WHO Covid report.

The issue last week was never really about the Five Eyes intelligence and signals grouping, but about what everyone knows, that New Zealand governments (and most of the Opposition) simply lack any moral fibre when it comes to the PRC.   The issue isn’t which platform New Zealand speaks on, but the extreme reluctance of its government –  Prime Minister and Foreign Minister in particular –  to say anything much.  The PRC is one of the most heinous regimes on the planet –  probably the most heinous consequential one –  and our elected leaders simply refuse to name the evil.

(Which is not to suggest that I think any other government of any other democratic country does all it could.  A few –  notably Germany –  seem quite as bad as New Zealand.  But the New Zealand stance is shameful and unworthy, reflect of politicians who seem to see only dollars.   But the only values that really count as such are those one is willing to pay a price for.)

For those interested in the economic coercion issue, the ABC had a nice treatment of Australia’s experience in a programme that screened last night.

There hasn’t been much, if anything, here over the last year or so on the (successive) New Zealand governments’ subservient and fearful relationship with the Peoples’ Republic of China. For some months I’ve had sitting on my pile to write about two books on the wider PRC issues (Hidden Hand by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Olberg, and Insidious Power: How China Undermines Global Democracy, a collection of papers including Anne-Marie Brady’s Magic Weapons paper on New Zealand). Perhaps one day.

But yesterday we had the first speech on the New Zealand/PRC relationship from our (relatively) new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta. There was no reason to suppose it would be anything other than dreadful. Mahuta’s only other on-the-record speech as foreign minister had been a largely unserious word-salad of little substance. Her track record on the PRC has been dreadful, right since her first (perhaps mis-spoken) substantive TV interview in the role in which she loftily declared that she “knew” the PRC valued diversity, through the persistent reluctance to say anything much if at all possible – and then apparently as late as possible – on the growing catalogue of PRC abuses and threats. Oh, and of course the speech was being given to the New Zealand China Council, the propaganda and apologist body set up by the previous government (and substantially taxpayer funded, with key government officials directly involved). The Council has never so much as uttered a word of criticism of the PRC and its chair and former Executive Director were often quite vocal in pushing back against the concerns expressed by people like Professor Brady. And, of course, if Mahuta has been bad, the Prime Minister – who will no doubt have cleared yesterday’s speech – has been even worse, utterly silent.

Nonetheless, I watched the livestream of yesterday’s speech and carefully read the full text. It really was dreadful, on multiple counts. And here I’m not even going to focus on such bizarre bits as this, from her introduction.

“I invoke the inspiration and guidance of the universe and the gods, I bestow a life-force upon this gathering.“

Is she both a polytheist and (claiming to be) a deity herself, to be “bestowing a life-force”, whatever that means?

Or her incomprehensible suggestion – having gone and on about “taniwha” – suggesting that “we [who?] share common taniwha with the Pacific”. Would any serious foreign minister from any serious country talk like this? Perhaps the goblins unite Europe?

And who knows what, if anything, she means by her suggestion of a foreign policy “founded in” the Treaty of Waitangi. Perhaps she has in mind it being okay if the PRC gets a few Taiwanese leaders to agree to cede sovereignty and then simply moves to annex the rest? Probably not, but it is just another example of the vacuousness – which, I suppose, must sound good to someone, but seems to be simply a deliberate distraction and an excuse of opting out and being unserious about the global challenges, notably those posed by the PRC.

My bigger concerns – the focus here – are around (a) the utter lack of any sign of a serious, transparent, framework for how the New Zealand government thinks about the PRC, and (b) the continuing signs, nonetheless, of some mix of deference, sheer cowardness, and indifference to what the PRC is doing to other free and democratic countries.

This was the first speech on the PRC relationship by a new foreign minister, delivered to a China-focused (well, more likely a dollar-focused) audience. And yet there were no thoughts on the nature of the PRC challenge – none, not even to suggest, say, that the government thought everything was just rosy and the PRC’s intentions were entirely benign. There was no structured or systematic engagement with the rise of China, in any dimension whatever, just the odd passing allusion to this or that (really amounting to little more than “China is big”), There was no engagement at all with the literature on PRC interference/influence – this in a country with a figure closely linked to the PRC/CCP faces electoral donations criminal charges this year – nothing on China and the international agencies, nothing on China and the South China Sea (or the East China Sea for that matter), nothing on the PRC reach into (and intimidation of) ethnic Chinese communities in other countries, nothing on the history and experience of economic coercion. Just nothing, no framework, nothing. Either there is such a framework and the government just prefers to keep the public in the dark (the government that used to boast that it would be the most open and transparent ever), or – more likely – there isn’t one and the government’s entire approach amounts to saying and doing absolutely as little as possible, always aiming to keep on the right side of Beijing come what may, without totally alienating traditionally like-minded countries (perhaps not even that bothers them, but they probably worry that significant chunks of the public might worry if it become too clear how explicit the sellout was). Recall that this is the political party whose then president only a few years ago was lauding the PRC and Xi Jinping.

There might be reasonable debates to be had about how best to respond to the PRC threat, but without a proper analysis of the issues and risks there is no real leadership to any such debate. Of course, one can’t fit everything in a 20 minute ministerial speech, but the government has the full resources of MFAT at its disposal, and there is no sign of any serious engagement or analysis from them either. For an issue, and series of threats, of this magnitude, it is simply not good enough. In fact, it probably isn’t going too far to call it a betrayal of democracy and open government, when there really should be a wider public engagement on how New Zealand, and likeminded countries, should respond to the PRC. All, it appears, to keep a few exporting firms happy from month to month.

So if there was no serious analytical framework in the speech – and clearly it was the Minister’s intention not to provide one – what about what was there? I’ve seen some champions of the government suggesting there was really quite a lot (of good) there, just expressed very subtly. Seems to me that a better way of putting it is that there a few lines in the speech – drafted in ways likely to be minimally offensive to a Beijing (that would continue to prefer to keep New Zealand onside and drive wedges between it and other free and democratic countries) – designed for exactly that purpose, but signifying almost nothing. And there is much else that, while perhaps diplomatic boilerplate language, shouldn’t be being used of one of the most heinous consequential regimes on the planet (itself the sort of line an honest and courageous government might use).

Thus stepping through the speech we have pandering lines like

“As we approach the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations next year,”

Which is, of course, true of the Peoples’ Republic (well, the CCP’s Republic) but we were allies with pre-Communist China in both world wars.

Or this one, which I’ve seen suggested as significant

“This has been a journey. Today we acknowledge the interests we share. Equally we have become more alert to the values that differentiate us.”

Well, okay, I guess there is a first derivative in that second sentence, but what of it? The Minister won’t even name these values that differentiate us, let alone do anything about the difference.

This line has also garnered a few headlines

In thinking about long-term economic resilience we also understand that there is value in diversity. Just as the Council has noted, it is prudent not to put all eggs into a single basket. The New Zealand government will continue to work with business to pursue a range of trade opportunities. 

As most of the media failed to report, the Minister was alluding to an utterly innocuous comment in the China Council’s own last Annual Report (you know it to be innocuous because nothing else gets in their Annual Reports). No country ever wants to have all the trade of its firms with those in a single other country – never has, never will. And that final sentence is really just a reminder of the fact that (for example) in the normal course of business New Zealand is currently negotiating preferential trade/investment agreements with the EU and with the UK. I’ll start to get interested when a minister says something like “if you deal in a country like the PRC you expose yourself to big risks with a regime unafraid to use trade as a coercive tool. If you get caught up in those you should go in with your eyes open, knowing that the New Zealand government isn’t here to help individual exporting firms, but the interests and values of wider New Zealand”.

Instead there were observations about the good relationship the Minister and Damien O’Connor had with their PRC counterparts – as if, in the current climate, this was a good thing. Neville Chamberlain seemed to like to think he had a good relationship with Hitler.

Then, of course, we get the line this government just loves to use – our allegedly shared commitments re climate change.

Beyond the regional agenda, many countries –including New Zealand – will continue to engage with China on climate change. The undertakings China has already made and its future actions, along with those of other big economies, will be hugely consequential.

As many others might note, in the unlikely event those “undertakings” are honoured.

She moves on to suggest that the New Zealand government “needs” to respect the values of the PRC/CCP? On what planet? One might well do to recognise what those “values” and priorities evidently are and engage the New Zealand public on what that means for us, but “respect them” Perhaps Ardern and Mahuta do? Most decent New Zealanders won’t. Forced organ transplants anyone? Compulsory sterilisations? Extreme repression of political and religious expression? The pre-eminence of the Party? You respect them if you must Ms Mahuta, but that tells us more about you.

And then we get another line that looks as though it was put in to be able to point to (“see, we did say something”).

And we look for a similar spirit of respect and engagement to be shown to all international friends and partners.  As a significant power, the way that China treats its partners is important for us.

This is probably a very muted suggestion that perhaps using economic coercion on (what was) our closest friend and ally, Australia, isn’t really on (perhaps also that holding Canadian citizens hostage isn’t our preferred option either) but so what? It is so muted it isn’t going to offend Beijing (no one supposes they really think we are okay with that sort of thing) and it says nothing starkly, doesn’t openly stand us alongside likeminded countries being coerced by the PRC. (She never even takes the opportunity to cite the recent paper suggesting that overall economic effects of PRC coercion efforts on Australia have been minimal, at least to date).

Then we get back to more pandering.

In terms of whanaungatanga the Dragon and the Taniwha may share similar characteristics but they exist in very different environmental conditions. The perspective each holds about the “optimum” environment for survival such as a country’s political system, democratic institutions, freedoms and liberties can and have shown to be significantly different.

Different perspectives can be positive, and underpin cultural exchange and learning,

But some differences challenge New Zealand’s interests and values.  There are some things on which New Zealand and China do not, cannot, and will not, agree.

While it is good to know that there are some things on which her government “cannot” agree with the PRC, isn’t it a trifle disconcerting that core aspects of our political systems are listed just before she just differences can be positive and implies we can learn from the PRC?

We then get the standard line – beloved of the previous government too – that

On many occasions New Zealand has raised issues privately with China. 

Except that no one, probably including the Chinese, take this seriously. When they won’t openly state – for the New Zealand public that they supposedly represent – what they say to the PRC, we can assume it is mostly “well, General Secretary Xi, you know our people don’t much like some of the things you do, but we won’t say anything openly, and lets get down to the next trade facilitation agreement”.

They keep trying to pretend to us that the PRC is a normal country, a normal regime, not the most heinous consequential regime on the planet, with generally malevolent intent.

Towards the end of the speech Mahuta briefly mentions a few public comments

Sometimes we will therefore find it necessary to speak out publicly on issues, like we have on developments in Hong Kong, the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and cyber incidents.  

But notice the feeble, almost neutral, framing even there – nothing about egregious abrogation of an international agreement, imprisonment of long-respected democratic figures, gross human rights abuses (which some of our international friends consider amount to “genocide’). Oh, and “cyber incidents”, not even attacks. (Although I will acknowledge that this comment ties China to cyber attacks more than I think the New Zealand government has previously done, but in a way so obscure designed for the public not to notice).

Of course, no mention of the things her government chooses not to comment on, such as the recent WHO report which she told us previously they couldn’t comment on because officials had not yet had the chance to study the report. Slow reading officials? Or a government and officials that prefer to look the other way? I think we all know which.

The final line that I’ve seen it suggested gave substance to the speech was this one

China can play a role in the long term economic recovery of the region but there is a substantial difference between financing loans and contributing to greater ODA investment in particular to the Pacific. We must move towards a more sustainable Pacific that respects Pacific sovereignties, and builds on Pacific peoples’ own capabilities, towards long-term resilience.

But there is nothing new in this whatever. As previous people have pointed out, we can never compete with the PRC in throwing money at the Pacific, but we do like to highlight that we give rather than lend (even though concessional loans often have a substantial grant element).

So that was what was in the speech. What there wasn’t was any mention of included:

• the recent imprisonment (or suspended sentences) for leading Hong Kong figures like Martin Lee and Jimmy Lai (no statement from the government either)
• no mention of that WHO Covid report. Still unread?
• no mention of PRC interference in New Zealand, including the intimidation of resident ethnic Chinese people, or the attempts to silence Anne-Marie Brady,
• no mention of the growing international concern about the threat to Taiwan, or the current standoff involving the Philippines in the South China Sea,
• no mention of how New Zealanders might consider taking their own (boycott) actions against companies using forced labour in Xinjiang,
• nothing about the sanctions the PRC has been imposing on various western figures recently,
• nothing about her government’s refusal to put sanctions of key PRC XInjiang figures, or the government’s decisions to scrap the Autonomous Sanctions bill that was before Parliament

Perhaps there is a case to be made for the government’s stance on each of these issues. but Mahuta didn’t make those cases, preferring to pretend the issues didn’t exist. It really was shameful.

And if all that was bad then there was what she said afterwards in response to questions. For example, it is reported that she dealt with a question on the Uighur situation by answering only in Maori (that presumably few present would have understood) but which a local academic reports includes this egregious line

“It’s important that we keep our perspectives on the situation of indigenous peoples elsewhere, they have complex, different laws, different government systems,

The Minister also grabbed headlines for her remarks distancing New Zealand from the use of the Five Eyes group of countries in responding to the PRC, suggesting that her government preferred the Five Eyes stuck to intelligence and that they would often prefer to walk alone on the PRC. Personally, I don’t have a strong view on the Five Eyes label, but these are countries that we might normally think we’d have an affinity with on such issues (and several of them – notably Canada – have not been particularly robust on the PRC themselves). But we all know that the issue isn’t really the Five Eyes – much though much of the far-left in New Zealand would probably prefer we weren’t part of it at all – but the New Zealand government’s preference – Ardern and Mahuta – to say as little as possible as rarely as possible, and keep in Beijing’s good books as long as possible as much as possible, pretty much whatever the regime does. And that is despicable. It might be one thing to distinguish ourselves from the Five Eyes grouping if New Zealand were becoming a uniquely courageous country working with wider groups of courageous countries willing to call out the regime internationally and act against it at home and abroad. But that isn’t it. It is simply a cowardly, mercenary, and utterly short-sighted, stance.

Of course, if Mahuta and her boss are dreadful on these issues – and despicable isn’t really too strong a word – it shouldn’t pass without notice that no party in Parliament, not even any individual MP, is any better. If, just possibly, a few words may be a little better now than at times under the previous government, the nature of the issues and threats is starker now, and all parties – all MPs – have less excuse for their willed blindness, their refusal to exercise any moral leadership. Two of our MPs – one each from National and Labour – (were allowed to be) signed up for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, and occasionally they have signed on to joint statements with large groups of MPs from other countries. But that is it. Neither one has given interviews or speeches domestically differentiating themselves from the shameful New Zealand political and business consensus that (a) dollars come before everything, and (b) that if we appease today, and appease tomorrow well….who can worry about beyond that.

UPDATE: A commenter sagely observes that in our culture, in days gone by, we celebrated St George and the tale of him slaying the dragon.

I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago noting how silent the competing politicians, and the media, had been on issues around the People’s Republic of China during our election campaign. The campaign has now almost come to an end, and nothing much has changed. That is, no doubt, just the way our politicians like it. No awkward questions, no challenges, no serious scrutiny of their own institutional complicity, no nothing.

I’m not going to repeat that post, but there are a few new points, and one I inadvertently overlooked and which has (or should have) acquired fresh life in the last week or so.

Perhaps you noticed that yesterday the PRC was elected to term on the UN Human Rights Council, along with a bunch of other egregious states. These elections are done by secret ballot, which must be terribly convenient for the politicians as the votes they instruct to be cast for their country normally remain secret. But there is nothing to stop journalists asking about New Zealand’s vote, or asking the Leader of the Opposition (or leaders of the minor parties) what stance they think New Zealand should have taken. It isn’t impossible that New Zealand abstained or even voted against – China’s election was far from unanimous – but surely voters have a right to know what stance our government took as regards such an egregious a human rights abuser as the PRC? It would be great if they did vote against – and they did join a recent multi-country letter on some of the PRC’s abuses – but it is pretty feeble stand if they won’t tell their own citizens they took such a stance. And if the government won’t say, what stance would National, ACT, or the Greens have taken?

Incidentally, reading the belatedly-released Labour manifesto – which, remarkably, had no reference to China, even in the foreign policy section – I noticed this

So government agencies – including the NZSF and ACC – will no longer be taking equity exposures to companies owned or controlled by the PRC/CCP? I don’t suppose so, but it rings fairly hollow if the PM and her colleagues think New Zealanders could “stand proudly behind” such investments.

Through the election campaign it seems that the National Party has carried on with its deference to the PRC/CCP. An Australian-based China analyst drew our attention to this

New Zealand: Guo Yezhou, deputy head of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, exchanged views with Peter Goodfellow, President of the New Zealand National Party, via videolink. #nzpolhttps://t.co/0KH8bgNTry pic.twitter.com/fDbA4RHR1Z

— Geoff Wade (@geoff_p_wade) October 4, 2020

Now perhaps it would be one thing for the National Party’s foreign affairs spokesman to be meeting with the PRC Ambassador (as with the ambassadors of other countries) but this is a party-to-party meeting, in the middle of a New Zealand election campaign. The same Goodfellow who previously championed Jian Yang, and who refuses to come clean on the National Party’s involvement/association with the CCP-affiliated people now facing electoral finance charges. What values, one wonders, do the ordinary members of the National Party share with the CCP? Few, if any, I imagine, but if so what is the party hierarchy doing holding party-to-party exchanges with the CCP. Pretty confident that in days gone by it was only the Socialist Unity Party that had much to do with the USSR Communist Party.

But the real prompt for this post was something I forgot to mention in the earlier one.

A couple of months ago, Professor Anne-Marie Brady at the University of Canterbury (with a couple of research assistant co-authors) published a paper titled “Holding a Pen in One Hand, Gripping a Gun in the Other: China’s Exploitation of Civilian Channels for Military Purposes in New Zealand”. It had been submitted as supplementary paper to the Justice select committee of the New Zealand Parliament and is substantially devoted to documenting the connections between New Zealand entities, especially universities, and PRC PLA-affiliated institutions and organisations. As she noted in the first of her Key Points

The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) rapid militarisation program is accelerating via an international technology transfer strategy, which includes academic exchanges, investment in foreign companies, espionage and hacking. Scientists work globally, so by accessing universities or tech companies in states with an advanced technology
sector like New Zealand, the PLA can get a foothold within the international network of scholars working on a given subject area.

It didn’t seem terribly controversial – previous papers by other authors have documented the PLA connections with many universities here and abroad – and I didn’t read it at the time.

But a few days later I noted the news that Canterbury University itself was ordering a review into the publication of this paper. Other academics apparently did not like it one little bit, and the Canterbury seemed ready to play along

Canterbury’s deputy vice-chancellor, Professor Ian Wright, said the complaining academics believed the publication contained “manifest errors of fact and misleading inferences”.

Brady herself appears to have been, at least temporarily, silenced and her voice has been totally absent from the public square in this year’s election campaign. You’ll recall that it was during the 2017 campaign that she released her Magic Weapons paper on PRC influence/interference activities in New Zealand, to the discomfort of much of the political class.

It seemed a very odd approach from the University of Canterbury. Academics often like to remind us that they have some sort of “critic and conscience” role in society, and that the freedom to speak openly and publish their material – in turn exposed to scrutiny from the public and peers – is a big part of how academe is supposed to run. And so if there were problems with Professor Brady’s paper, wouldn’t the normal approach have been for those who thought they had identified problems – whether of fact or interpretation or emphasis – to have published something themselves, and let the issues be fought out openly.

I’m, of course, not an academic myself, but many/most of the signatories to an open letter that was released last week are. Addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canterbury, the (now in excess of 150) signatories wrote

Professor Anne-Marie Brady’s work has had a far reaching impact on public and policy discussions globally, which is why we were dismayed to read Martin Van Beynen’s report in Stuff entitled “Canterbury Uni orders review into publication by China expert Anne-Marie Brady”. All of us are familiar with Professor Brady’s superb report “Holding a Pen in One Hand, Gripping a Gun in the Other” that was submitted to the New Zealand Parliament’s Justice Select Committee this past July. We are shocked to read that your Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ian Wright, gave a statement to the press confirming that the University was entertaining the complaints, and giving them currency by explaining that they  allege that the paper contains “manifest errors of fact and misleading inferences.”

We, who know this area, can see no manifest errors or misleading inferences based on the evidenced material provided in the report. The paper does not make “inferences.” People who study it may draw some, but that does not mean the paper made them, misleading or otherwise. Since Professor Wright publicly voiced the allegations a group of us peers again went through Professor Brady’s Parliamentary submission. We find in it no basis for the allegations. Some of the links in its comprehensive sourcing have gone stale since she submitted it but those URLs all still work if put into Wayback or archive.today.

We are disappointed to see no prompt follow-up, explanation or clarification of the University’s position concerning the allegations. The impression left by that published report should have been corrected to show that the University did not intend any endorsement of the complaints, nor an approval or acceptance of complaints to the University as the appropriate way to criticise academic work. The silence has been interpreted as collaboration in slander against a very distinguished scholar whose work has been consistently based on sound social scientific methodology.

We would have expected you to stand up for your university, the right of any of its members to publish their research freely, however contentious, and for Professor Brady as a brave colleague. She has been the target of a harassment campaign and threatening menace because of the serious implications of her important research.

We ask that you issue a prompt and full apology to Professor Brady on behalf of the University of Canterbury for not rejecting the complaints against Professor Brady and instead referring the complainants to the normal way of disagreeing with a paper – publishing their criticism. Professor Wright should publicly apologise for allowing his statement to give credence to the complaints, whether or not he intended that.

We know of no valid basis for any “review” of Professor Brady’s work other than by her peers and other researchers and commentators, as is normal for academic research and publication. That will and should include informed criticism as and if grounds emerge. Her publications are subject to peer review. They have brought great international credit to your University. You risk destroying that credit, to leave it with her alone.

And yet this fairly stinging attack on the university, and robust defence of Anne-Marie Brady’s paper has had almost no coverage in New Zealand. And this even though the signatories include, from abroad, some leading academic authors on issues around modern China, as well as several local academics and – to my surprise – two Labour MPs.

(Regular readers may recall that this is not the first open letter in defence of Professor Brady in the years since she first went public on these issues – the earlier one was about the apparent indifference of our political leadership to the break-ins to Professor Brady’s home and office that were widely regarded as most likely to have had PRC origins.)

One might suppose that in the middle of an election campaign, when academics – including many from abroad – and MPs have signed an open letter about attempts to silence or intimidate a leading academic writing on important public policy issues it would spark some serious coverage. Questions, for example, to the Prime Minister, questions to the Leader of the Opposition, questions to the Minister of Education (what sort of system is he presiding over than sees such chilling “reviews” of controversial material), of the two Labour MPs who signed the letter, and perhaps even of the Natiomal MP – Simon O’Connor – who has sometimes put his name to efforts to push back on the PRC but who is strangely silent this time. But not a word. It is all-too-easy to see why the politicians would prefer the issue, and probably Professor Brady, to just go away. But why almost all the media make themselves complicit with this shameful silence is a bit more of a mystery, but not to their credit.

The publication of the open letter finally prompted me to read Professor Brady’s paper. To be honest, I was prompted by this line from the open letter

We, who know this area, can see no manifest errors or misleading inferences based on the evidenced material provided in the report. The paper does not make “inferences.” People who study it may draw some, but that does not mean the paper made them, misleading or otherwise.

In the past, sometimes when I have read Professor Brady’s pieces I have thought she drew stronger inferences and implications than the facts, as she presented them, seemed to warrant. But reading through the latest paper I was struck by the almost-complete absence of inference. She offers, and appears, to document a long series of fact, and offers some thoughts on possible policy responses. I can quite see that some of those involved would prefer (a) that the facts weren’t know, and/or (b) that people looked more benignly on the PRC/PLA connections that benefit their universities, but the significance of those connections is a matter for debate, not for chilling attempts at academic censorship. But neither our politicians nor our media seem to care. Coming on top of how Professor Brady has been treated over the last three years it is a sad commentary on (a) what New Zealand has come to, and (b) how in the thrall of the PRC our universities and business/political sectors seem to have become. And all this without even mentioning things like the Confucius Institutes that our universities host and partly pay for, providing access to our schools for PRC entities and messaging.

At this election, the two previous United Front connected MPs – Jian Yang, he of the CCP/PLA, and Raymond Huo (the one who tried to stop Brady even testifying to the foreign interference inquiry) will pass from the scene and back into private life. But it is not as if any of the parties seems to have had a change of heart, as they’ve rushed to select new Beijing-comfortable ethnic Chinese candidates – one of whom, former head of the Chinese Students Association (consulate-controlled entities), is now certain to enter Parliament.

And then there is ACT. Not long ago it might have seemed almost irrelevant, but now seems likely to emerge from the election with quite a few MPs. ACT leader, David Seymour, has from time to time been heard uttering some quite encouraging words on the PRC, including some forthright comments at the time of the Hong Kong unrest last year. However at least one person, who knows his stuff in this area, has become quite disillusioned with ACT, suggesting that principle has been traded in for opportunism to some considerable extent.

At the request of people with associations with him I’ve previously published links to translations of a couple of pieces by Auckland-based dissident Chen Weijian, who edits the Chinese-language online publication Beijing Spring. Here is a link to an authorised translation of a new piece, Has the ACT party betrayed its principles on China?

The views are solely those of the author. He begins noting his previous enthusiasm for ACT

It’s voting time in New Zealand. Until fairly recently, I had the comfort of knowing that there was a party and politician that stood for the values I cared about: David Seymour’s ACT.

When Seymour supported the Hong Kong protests here in Aotearoa he captured my interest. He was the only New Zealand politician to express solidarity by appearing in person at gatherings of students in this country supporting the rights of Hong Kong.

Seymour delivered well-considered, passionate speeches backing the demonstrators.   That was when I decided to vote for the ACT Party. 

However, David’s recent actions are inconsistent with the words he spoke when I took him for that rarest of species: a politician of principle.

But then proceeds to discuss the extensive advertising ACT has apparently been doing in the CCP-aligned Chinese Herald, including apparently in the 1 October special edition devoted to the PRC national day and the celebration of the Party.

He goes on to highlight’s ACT’s selection as a candidate – albeit well down the list – who has an extensive background in missile technology (and from whom, apparently, never a discouraging word has been heard about the PRC). The article ends

Most Chinese immigrants, even if highly educated in China, do not rise to such high status positions so soon after settling overseas. However, Ms. Xiao’s ascent has been preternaturally rapid.

Right now, fellow liberal democracies such as the USA and Australia are working hard to squeeze out CCP influence through party-state organs such as the United Front and other limbs of Beijing. Many people with special relationships and obligations to the CCP are in a panic.

It is my strongly held conviction that New Zealand must do the same, and ACT, as a leading voice for liberty, should do the same. Until that happens, they will never get my vote.

I’m much less convinced than the author that ACT has, for a long time, been much of a party of principle – rather they tend to hunt where the votes are, whatever it takes, and this time Chen suggests that that is among the Beijing-sympathetic bits of the ethnic Chinese community. So in many respects I’m less bothered about ACT, which will always be at most a peripheral player in New Zealand, but his penultimate paragraph is one that rings truer to me.

Unfortunately there is little or no evidence that our major parties – notably this time the Labour Party, which will certainly lead the next government – really care at all, or even take seriously these issues. There is a complete absence of any moral leadership on these issues, whether from National or Labour, and too many establishment institutions – notably the universities – seem to quietly cheer on, even egg on, that failure, that choice.

If the silence and complicity of both National and Labour is telling, there is no sign of the minor parties is any better (I’ve been through almost all their websites in a fruitless quest for a party I might consider voting for).

There hasn’t been much about the PRC/New Zealand issues here recently. That isn’t because I’ve lost interest, or because the issues have become less pressing, but just because my health has been mediocre enough that I’ve only had the energy for the bare minimum of writing. There is an interesting piece on New Zealand firms’ trade with entities in the PRC that has been sitting on my desk for almost two months, although I hope to write about that in more detail before long.

But the election is now almost upon us, and what is really striking about the campaign – and the media coverage of the campaign – is the complete absence of discussion of any aspects of the CCP/PRC issues, domestic or international. There are lots to choose from. all of which should matter, and on which the parties should be challenged and scrutinised.

There is, for example, the overt pressure the PRC is putting on fellow democracies, India and Taiwan, right now (one could add Japan, in the East China Sea). New Zealand media don’t seem to give much coverage to the China-led tensions on the Line of Actual Control in North India that has already led to fatalities, let alone to the (apparently) much greater threat associated with the repeated incursions of PRC military aircraft into or near Taiwanese air space, and the apparent – really more than “apparent”, quite openly stated – PRC determination to take Taiwan one way or the other. And no New Zealand media appear to have made any effort to gauge the competency (around foreign affairs), or moral core, of those vying for political leadership, by asking them for their perspective on these disputes or how they would think about framing possible New Zealand responses to more overt aggression. Both main parties have been more interested in talking up their “friends” in Beijing – a line they might also reasonably be asked about – than about articulating a clear stance opposed to resolution of political disputes by force.

Then there are developments in Hong Kong, where one might – perhaps – give the main parties a grudging near-pass mark, with the government having suspended (and National supported them doing so) the extradition agreement with Hong Kong. But it has hardly been a full-throated condemnation of the rapid erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong or (say) offers of asylum to dissidents fleeing the territory.

But far worse than what is happening in Hong Kong – and clearly convergence to the PRC model was inevitable at some point, though we all might have hoped for a less-bad PRC by then – is the growing evidence of systematic and intensifying repression across multiple fronts in the PRC in the last few years, including in the period since our last election. Xinjiang has had the most attention – the concentration camps, the extreme surveillance and control, the apparent forced sterilisations, and so on. But it isn’t just about one region, or one minority religion/belief. On a regional basis, Tibet is back in the news, as is the intensifying pressure in Southern Mongolia. The evidence of use of political or religious prisoners for forced organ transplants is even better documented now than it was. The repression of Christians, Muslims, and other sects is intensifying, and any scope for freedom of expression – always limited – seems to be now much more limited. And yet what do we hear from Ardern or Collins (or the other small parties) on any of this? From National, a while ago we had senior Todd McClay touting PRC propaganda around Xinjiang and suggesting it was really none of anyone else’s business. Perhaps he knows better now – though surely he always did – but there has been no retraction, and no willingness to criticise his parties “friends” and donors. And Labour really isn’t any better. Defenders of the PM will suggest that “human rights issues” are raised in private but (a) why should we believe this? and (b) it is unlikely that what is said in private, in apologetic diplomatic language, bothers anyone (in the PRC).

You get the sense that both parties are more interested in keeping in with the dreadful regime in Beijing – that really combines much of the worst of Nazi Germany and the USSR – than in articulating the values of New Zealanders. You certainly get the sense that both parties are more interested in serving the economic interests of a few big corporates (including university ones) than in representing the values and interests of New Zealanders. There is no open criticism, there is no talk of trade sanctions (eg on products using concentration camp labour from Xinjiang), there is no talk of putting in place a system of Magnitsky-type sanctions. And no media seem to ask any of the party leaders of their foreign affairs spokespeople about any of this. What, for example, does “kindness” mean as regards the abuses of the PRC.

One little encouraging development in recent months has been the formation of IPAC, the interparliamentary alliance on China, with significant representation from members of Parliament in a range of countries, including many quite senior figures. Somewhat belatedly, two New Zealand MPs joined: National’s Simon O’Connor and Labour’s Louisa Wall. That’s good – and one can’t imagine the National whips etc can have been entirely happy about O’Connor who has been chair of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs committee. But I’ve not seen a single media piece on this development – no attempt to interview O’Connor or Wall on their views, including of what our main parties or governments should be doing about the PRC, or to talk to the party leaders about their stance on IPAC and its calls for the West to take a stronger stand.

And nearer to home, there is no continuing media coverage of the fact that we go into an election with both main parties still embroiled in controversy – and legal investigations – around donations from CCP/PRC-linked figures. This is most stark as regards the charges facing Jami-Lee Ross (who was a senior National MP at the time of the relevant developments), and several ethnic Chinese New Zealand citizens – including Yikun Zhang, who the parties got together to honour for, in effect, services to Beijing – around donations to the National Party. National has not been straight with the public about anything to do with this affair, and no other party seems bothered. Meanwhile Labour has its own issues – former leader Phil Goff, as regards donations to his mayoral campaign, former Cabinet minister Lianne Dalziel over donation to her campaign, and the obscure SFO investigation into some aspect of donations to Labour in 2017. And yet we hear almost nothing of this – not, I’m sure, out of respect for fair trial rights, but because it suits all the big parties to keep quiet. But why does the media let them get away with it? Are they too unbothered about the corruption of our political system, and the suborning of the process by parties linked to the PRC?

Last year we had the political theatre in which the government – with National’s support – rushed through under urgency (keep debate and scrutiny to a minimum) a largely-cosmetic change slightly further reducing the (already severely limited scope) of foreign citizens to donate to directly to New Zealand political parties. It wasn’t a bad change per se, but it consciously and deliberately avoided confronting the much bigger issues: the ability of closely-held New Zealand registered companies owned by foreign citizens to donate (where there have been real and actual issues around PRC-related donations), and around a political culture that has seemed to regard as quite acceptable to take donations – large donations – from New Zealand citizens or residents who are themselves closely connected to the CCP/PRC. Nothing serious has been done about the law, and no party has apparently been willing to take a self-denying vow re PRC-linked donations. And no interviewer or journalist puts pressure on them to do so.

As it happened, I asked about this issue at our local candidates meeting last week. With a bit of a preamble, including noting what last year’s reform had/hadn’t done, I asked National, Labour, Greens and New Zealand First (the parties in Parliament) if they thought their parties should/would take donations from people or companies, NZ citizens or not, with close connections to the Chinese Communist Party (which the PRC operates at the behest, and in the interest, of).

I got no clear and straightforward answer, of the sort one might have expected if, for example, candidates/parties had been asked about people with strong neo-Nazi associations or (one imagines) in days gone by about the USSR or Nazi Germany or the like. It isn’t some obscure party/country I was asking about, but the dominant force in the largest country on earth, a country with a track record of ties – good and ill – to New Zealand.

The young New Zealand First candidate – a researcher in their parliamentary offices – was almost funny. He was desperate not to say the wrong thing and ended up noting that it was a foreign policy question – about NZ political parties taking donations from NZ citizens? – and the question would have to be put to “Winston”.

The Greens and National candidate both get some positive marks. The (very able) Greens candidate noted that her party did not have a specific policy re the CCP and she wasn’t about to make one up on the spot, but noted that she did think New Zealand should be louder in calling out human rights abuses (re the PRC, the Greens this term have been about as silent as the rest). The National candidate suggested – not entirely accurately – that the party is very transparent about all donations, and while he avoided the direct question did suggest we might benefit from some system of registering and disclosing those working for/lobbying for foreign governments (he mentioned the US system, which attracted guffaws from the Green-supporting Newtown crowd). But it was a step up on his National predecessor’s approach at the 2017 candidates meeting.

Labour’s candidate was the only sitting MP, Paul Eagle. His response was that Labour adheres to the law – well, probably mostly – but as he well knew that was not the question. He then went on to suggest that he didn’t know Labour approach to the sort of donations I was asking about and that he would have to check and come back to me. I emailed him the next morning (last Friday) to repeat the question, but – perhaps much as expected – have heard nothing back.

I don’t want to be too hard on individual candidates – all rather junior in their own parties – and it was more telling about the refusal of all the main parties to take this issue seriously, and be quite clear that – no matter how much was on offer – they would not take donations from people with close CCP ties. That said, most of them had little or nothing to lose….and not one was willing to say “but, speaking personally, I think it would be quite inappropriate to take such donations – or those from anyone with close ties with a foreign political party or government”. Not one. It was establishment New Zealand’s indifference, perhaps desperation for dollars, on display. And, of course, no interviewer or debate moderator asks the people with clout – the party leaders – about this, even though it is no hypothetical, and there is a clear track record of such donations in the past. Those donations were, it appears, legal. They were not right (and as Anne-Marie Brady has noted, many forms of PRC influence in other countries, including New Zealand, are legal and yet quite concerning).

The final item on my list of things of which we hear almost nothing in this campaign is the efforts by both main parties (in particular) to ensure that they keep ties in to the PRC’s United Front efforts in New Zealand by recruiting candidates, often to safe list positions, that Beijing will smile on. The grossest example of course was Jian Yang – whose past was finally exposed just before the last election, and who eventually acknowledged misrepresenting his past, at the behest of his then PLA/CCP masters, to get into New Zealand in the first place. National seemed unbothered – Jian Yang claimed they had always known his past, even if the voters weren’t so lucky – and, worse, neither were any of the other parties. On the Labour side, there was Raymond Huo, perhaps not with a past as egregiously awful with Jian Yang’s, but with a present stance arguably worse (the man, who chairing the foreign interference inquiry – extraordinary in itself for Labour – actively tried to prevent Professor Brady for testifying). Rather belatedly this year, both men have decided to move on and spend more time with their families – Yang after having been talked up by National during the year and promised a high list place. But both sides have replaced them. I presume the National replacement for Jian Yang is likely to miss out, but Labour Naisi Chen seems sure to enter Parliament, coming off the back of a past as president of the (PRC-consulate controlled) Chinese students association in Auckland, and who at a recent candidates meeting was reported as also engaging in minimising the Xinjiang abuses. And yet no other party seems bothered, and the media gives the matter almost no coverage.

One could, perhaps, explain away any one of the items on this list. Not all are perhaps quite as important as the others, the economy is not in great shape, the virus lurks etc. But it really isn’t adequate as an excuse – whether from the political parties, who would clearly just prefer the issue didn’t come up – or the media which seems to do nothing to raise it. Those companies trading with firms in China must be delighted. They certainly don’t want any risk that they might fall foul of PRC displeasure – as some industries in Australia have, where the government has taken a somewhat more forthright stand – and simply expect that the rest of us should pay the price while they sup with the devil without even the precaution of carrying a long spoon.

And perhaps it is fair to note that foreign affairs often aren’t central in New Zealand elections but (a) many of these issues aren’t about foreign affairs, but about how we govern ourselves, and (b) that isn’t always so (think of our past whether around nuclear ships, Springbok tours), and (c) on most reckonings the PRC is now a big and threatening presence on the world stage, and in many individual countries. Troubled as the US political system is, it is notable how different the tone of the comment – fact of the comment – is there, whether from Democrats or Republicans.

Our so-called leaders really are a shameful bunch, apparently more interested in keeping their heads in the sand (or those of the public) and keeping the deals and donations flowing, rather than evincing any interest in leading conversations about either emerging geopolitical risks, the nature and character of the PRC, and/or the PRC’s activities here. It should be sobering to recall the break-ins to Professor Brady’s home and office that happened during this parliamentary term. Both National and Labour set out to minimise the potential issue – other parties as bad – and now it seems to suit them for such events to be brushed over and forgotten.

If the politicians are bad – and they are the ones who really matter, who vie to lead and who would like us to believe they have our long-term best interests at heart – the media is (with rare occasional exceptions) little better. It is pretty shameful all round. Beliefs and values that are worth their salt are worth paying a price for, but it isn’t clear that National or Labour (or, as far as I can tell, the rest) have any values worth the name when it comes to the most consequential evil regime now on the planet and its activities here and abroad. That is sad commentary on what New Zealand – once quite clear about its opposition to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, under parties of either stripe – has become.

For those with access, there was a good article in the Financial Times last week about coercive economic “diplomacy” by the PRC. The article was by New Zealander Jamil Anderlini, the FT’s Asia editor. He made the case for countries to stand, and work, together to resist the PRC’s attempts to use trade pressure countries – calling for a new and better United Front of democracies with common long-term interests in this area. Our politicians seem to think it is just to cower and defer to the regime, and do as little as possible to ever upset them (which only ever encourages thugs), rather than standing with other countries that share something rather closer to our values than National’s and Labour’s CCP friends do.