This situation with NZ meat rotting on chinese docks is starting to look less like a cock-up on our behalf, and more like a sharp short yanking of China’s economic leash over NZ.
The Government don’t even seem to be sure as to why there is a problem in the first place.
Millions of tons of export meat conveniently held up for export certificate reasons have to be viewed within a context of America aggressively pursuing a TPPA with NZ.
This free trade nightmare where corporations get to deregulate our entire economy to the level of Pike River Mine is a national security issue for America, it’s not a trade deal. With the South Pacific the defacto theatre for a Sino-American cold war, America want the Washington Consensus to mean a leash around NZs economic sovereignty. China’s sudden stringent focus on counterfeit products as the justification of holding up millions in trade would be ironically hilarious if it didn’t have such deep questions for us.
Adding insult to injury, NZ imports thousands of tones of Chinese food without ever being tested at our border.
Free trade is never free. China wants NZ to acknowledge that we have been given a special experimental relationship with China and that they are more economically influential than America. While this happens, America wants more than Tim Grosser flirting with the TPPA, they want a commitment to sign.
We have a Dunedin Mayor told to avoid the Dali Lama after meeting Chinese officials, we have a Chinese spy ship in our Port while it’s spying capacity is quietly avoided and a Zespri scandal that highlights the difficulty of doing business in an authoritarian culture built upon bribery.
China’s influence in NZ is already far greater than most realize.
China wants to be noticed, and as the economic power house of our region, we should be playing smarter foreign policy than Key’s hamfisted cosying up to America. With a large number of second generation Chinese-New Zealanders now living here, we should be turning to these new citizens to be the building block between both cultures.
NZ needs to stay friends with China and America while remaining at arms length from both of them. China’s sudden need to hold up our exports is a reminder of what will happen if we favour the US over them.
It’s a scenario we will increasingly see more of especially with the push to sign the TPPA by the end of this year, how we deal with it will be the test of our political vision to hold up an independent foreign policy.
