New Zealand-China relations: Wellington’s ‘weakest link’ image in focus as Western allies pursue hawkish line on Beijing

New Zealand’s conciliatory approach towards China is increasingly coming under threat, analysts said, as Wellington faces pressure from its Western allies to jointly counter Beijing’s growing influence. Ahead of his visit to Beijing last month, New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins toned down criticisms relating to human rights abuses, tensions over Taiwan, and China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In Beijing, Hipkins met Chinese President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Qiang and signed a raft of trade agreements. However, days after returning from the Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Hipkins said the Pacific region was becoming more contested and less secure as China becomes more assertive. Speaking at the China Business Summit in Auckland on Monday, Hipkins said Beijing’s bid to exert influence was a major driver of increasing strategic competition, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. Geoffrey Miller, a geopolitical analyst at the Victoria University of Wellington’s Democracy Project focusing on New Zealand’s foreign policy, said the country’s balanced approach towards Beijing was now under threat as its Western partners pressured it to be more hawkish. Hipkins’ attendance at this month’s Nato summit was “clearly a long-term proposition and far from just a one-off move to show solidarity with Ukraine”, Miller said, noting that New Zealand had recently released an assessment describing the future as “grim” and calling out what it said was China’s “assertive” foreign policy. In June, New Zealand also signed up to the Joint Declaration Against Trade-Related Economic Coercion and Non-Market Policies and Practices, alongside Australia, Canada, Japan, Britain and the United States. Is anti-nuclear New Zealand ‘playing with fire’ as it mulls role in Aukus? “[This] was clearly aimed at China, although it did not mention Beijing by name,” Miller said. Nicholas Ross Smith, a senior research fellow at the University of Canterbury’s National Centre for Research on Europe with a focus on great-power competition, said New Zealand had found itself in a challenging position where strategic hedging was becoming much harder to achieve. “Reliability seems a big concern in the West at the moment, with New Zealand getting a reputation for being the weakest link not only in the Nato AP4 but in Five Eyes, too,” Smith said, referring to the transatlantic security alliance’s four “Asia-Pacific partners” and the Five Eyes international intelligence alliance, which also includes Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States. Nato has drawn closer to the AP4 – Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea – in recent months to “strengthen dialogue and cooperation” amid China’s growing military and security ties with Russia. Beijing accuses the alliance of attempting to establish a regional security bloc in a bid to contain China. Marc Lanteigne, an associate professor of political science and international relations at the University of Tromso in Norway, said one of the factors contributing to Hipkins’ concerns about Pacific security was last week’s signing of a policing deal between China and the Solomon Islands. Critics fear the move will “entrench Chinese strategic interests in the Pacific islands at the expense of New Zealand”, Lanteigne said, adding that Beijing’s recent announcement about an imminent visit to the Cook Islands – a self-governing country in “free association” with New Zealand that administers its own affairs, but whose people are considered New Zealand citizens and are free to live and work there – also added to anxieties in Wellington. “The New Zealand government is facing the stark possibility that maintaining a de facto non-alignment policy towards China is rapidly becoming non-viable,” Lanteigne said. Australia, New Zealand urge China to ‘provide transparency’ on Solomon Islands police pact A raft of deals were signed last week during a visit to Beijing by Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, including an agreement allowing China to maintain a police presence in the Pacific nation until 2025. Robert Patman, an international-relations professor at New Zealand’s University of Otago, said it was inaccurate to suggest that Wellington was hedging between China and its Western allies in “a purely reactive way”. Pointing to a foreign-policy speech given by Hipkins on July 7, Patman said New Zealand had made it clear that even though its relationship with China was the country’s “most complex”, it would persist in having “an honest and open dialogue” with Beijing. “While Hipkins was diplomatic during his visit, his government continues to have robust exchanges with Beijing on a number of issues,” Patman said. “New Zealand believes that China and Russia must not be pigeonholed together, and a good China policy will involve defeating Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.” Wang Xiaolong’s comments Last week, China’s ambassador to New Zealand Wang Xiaolong warned Wellington not to “open the door to the devil” by partnering with Nato in any push to contain Beijing in the region. Lanteigne, the international-relations professor, said Wang’s comments reflected frustrations in Beijing over the possibility of Nato enlarging its interests more formally into the Asia-Pacific, and came hot on the heels of the Vilnius summit’s joint communique, which stated that China’s ambitions and coercive policies challenge the alliance’s “interests, security and values”. “This was a red light for Beijing that Nato was seeking to add the Asia-Pacific to its strategic spheres of interest,” Lanteigne said. China was hoping to convince New Zealand of the benefits of maintaining a less confrontational stance, he added. Noting that New Zealand has been an enthusiastic Nato partner since 2012, the University of Otago’s Patman said Wellington “rejects the right of China to constrain its foreign policy”, noting that the South Pacific nation’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta had dismissed Wang’s characterisation of the security alliance. What’s New Zealand’s plan as superpower rivalry escalates in the Pacific? Mahuta said the relationships other countries had with Nato was a matter for them, but that New Zealand and Nato had a long history of cooperation and shared a strong commitment to the international rules-based system. However, the University of Canterbury’s Smith said that New Zealand was likely to heed Wang’s comments due to the country’s reliance on China as an export destination. Annual trade volumes between China and New Zealand reached more than US$24.7 billion in 2021, four times those of 2008 when the two countries first signed a free-trade agreement. Last April, the two countries’ upgraded free-trade deal came into force and included new market-access commitments in goods and services, and additional trade facilitation measures. Geopolitical analyst Miller said that as compared to Wellington’s trade deal with Beijing, the agreement with the European Union “underscored how much New Zealand still needs China”. The latter agreement restricts imports of New Zealand beef to the bloc of 450 million people to just 11,000 tonnes annually. New Zealand exports more than 200,000 tonnes of beef to China every year.

New Zealand-China relations: Wellington’s ‘weakest link’ image in focus as Western allies pursue hawkish line on Beijing

New Zealand’s policy of strategic hedging is becoming harder to achieve as China grows more assertive in the Pacific region Wellington continues to have ‘robust exchanges’ with Beijing, analysts said – but has also come under fire for opening the door to the Nato ‘devil’

New Zealand’s policy of strategic hedging is becoming harder to achieve as China grows more assertive in the Pacific region

Wellington continues to have ‘robust exchanges’ with Beijing, analysts said – but has also come under fire for opening the door to the Nato ‘devil’