FINALLY someone has pointed out that China is using soft power to extend its power into NZ.
The new strategic paper pointing out China and Russia are a threat is a long time coming. When you look at how deep China’s influence inside the National Party is, to the point of having a spy inside their caucus, pointing out the negative soft power is righteous.
How China responds will matter. They could slow imports to hurt us, or they could stoke pro-China protests on the streets of Auckland to cause domestic unrest. Consider how China created the pro-China Tibet protests in Auckland in the late 2000’s.
The problem with naming China and Russia is that it locks us into Trump’s America, but with our addition in the 5 Eyes spy club it’s difficult to not be run by Washington.
Ron wants to make the military combat ready again, that’s the real point to naming the threats.
Ron Mark is a Hawk’s hawk. He’s blunt when it’s needed and he’s bluntly diplomatic when it’s needed he’s the sort of person who gets what he wants. If he wants the military to be offensive rather than just defensive, it’s going to happen.
Buying warplanes that have an offensive capacity would be an enormous ramping up of militarisation of our military and looking at gaining a capacity we currently don’t have.
By adding climate change in our defence strategy we accept we will need more military muscle to deal with those conditions. It also suggests that the NZDF have done their intelligence on Ron Mark who is a fanatical recycler.
Domestically this is smart politics for NZ First. Pointing out China’s influence inside NZ is also a message aimed at dislodging National Party supporters who are watching the rise of the Blue Dragons inside the National Party with alarm. If China does use it’s influence over local Mandarin Newspapers to stoke protest action, NZers will panic when they see the size of those protests.
Julie Anne Genter is on to discuss 50-50 gender splits on boards. I think that if the private sector is constantly saying they don’t have enough woman who can get onto Boards, then having 50-50 in the public sector would help grow that pool of talent while providing further career advancement for women.
The feminist vs trans debate is on. So brutal, so terrifyingly brutal. Never discuss the issue or you get death threats.
Go Ron Mark!
I hold a deep suspicion that China has already exerted influence over our country after this curious incident in 2013;
https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/whats-the-beef-guv/
And this follow-up;
https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/taiwan-fta-confirmation-by-tvnz-of-china-pressuring-the-beehive/
However, whatever transpired is not solely a fault of the Chinese government.
The US leveraged Samoa to lift a ban of unhealthy food imports which was worsening the nation’s obesity/diabetes problem. As a ‘price’ for admission to the WTO, Samoa had to lift it’s bans on unhealthy food products, as I blogged in 2011;
https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/youll-have-a-free-market-even-if-it-kills-you/
When it comes to ‘soft power’ (or the American variety of ‘hard power’ of “regime change”, invasions, financing “contra” rebels, etc), no super power is blameless.
Which is why we need to become neutral – and build up our defence forces. And that includes researching, developing and producing our own weapons for our armed forces here from our own resources.
100% agree. We’d be much better served at being the Pacific equivalent of Switzerland (which has served them extremely well globally), rather than choosing sides in this pointless pissing contest between superpowers we ultimately have zero influence over.
Here Here. In my opinion China is the lessor of two evils. They are expansionist in a way but they use trade as a lever and not the threat or actual use of miliitary force to try and acheive dominance, as the USA does. We deserve an independent position on the world stage and that requires us to jettison five eyes and adopt a self reliant attitude towards the world. Much easier than “the powers that be” would have us believe I think.
How much really valuable strategic information do we get from Five eyes? Fuck all. I get more from such commentators as Paul Craig Roberts, Harley Schlanger, Jim Willie and London Paul.
You may express your skepticism but I would bet my world view is more accurate than anyone relying on TV1, TV3, RNZ or if you are in government Five Eyes.Oh and then there is Russia. No threat to anyone but actually the one super power that has a “live and let live “international outlook. And that is why the mockingbird media we are subjected to daily demonize them at every opportunity.
No, but one superpower at least resembles a democracy the other has just declared its dear leader president for life.
One superpower has powerful corporations at least motivated for their shareholders, one has corporations tethered to dear leaders government.
The communist/capitalist Chinese system allows enormous strategic manipulation.
Yes China is slowly taking over (NZ) this country without a shot fired as I had seen when travelling through Africa.
Good for NZF for pointing the finger at China becoming the new ‘global colonial expansionist power.’
yes, yes .. ‘You can’t serve two masters ..’ But why are those masters America and China, how about serving the NZ citizenry first.
Because the call that blindsides you in the middle of the night won’t be from either China or America, I guarantee you that – it’ll be from friends and family.
As a country we can choose who we’re friends with and the closeness of those relationships. If NZ was meant to be controlled, it would have came with a remote.
“If China does use it’s influence over local Mandarin Newspapers to stoke protest action, NZers will panic when they see the size of those protests.”
I think the Chinese government would be making a huge tactical error if they did this. Much better to leave your fifth columnists dormant until you have a good reason to deploy them.
China will do what they are doing already, bankrolling the National Party and trying to undermine the Labour led government economically and politically.
When the National Party used to trumpet about how dedicated they were in the fight against communism we kind of assumed they meant ALL communism, but obviously they were only talking about SOVIET communism.
National seem rather partial to the Chinese brand of communism.
Is that what Massey’s Cossacks fought for? Maoism?
They wouldn’t believe it if they could see it now.
China has a spirit and history unparalleled by any other. They’ve overcome feudal blood lords, Mao, Famine, The Japanse Empire and now the U.S empire.
When the Himalayan Glaciers that feed the 3 great rivers of China retreat into climate disaster Chinese agricultures will lose its ability to sustain 1.4 billion people.
As time goes on we will have to be more accomodating to Chinese Interests because we’ve left alternatives modes of deplomacy way to late and billions underfunded.
Just to assure you that I have no personal or racial vendetta against the Chinese people, I am married to one in fact.
I don’t like their surreptitious meddling in NZ politics, infiltrating a major political party for their own imperialistic ends as did the Americans in earlier decades (ironically the same party).
I only mention this because the U.S. Empire is fading. With out Trump the share market will tank along with any pretence of American exeptionalism. We can quibble about who’s lawn gets mowed first or we can get on with the business of creating a viable middle class.
Coming into the 21st century we were supposed to have a 3 frigate navy, F-16s, trade agreements with Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia, the GDP should have grown by 3% but we could barely manage 2% while selling out $6 billion every year to foreign financiers.
Let’s just get onto it sooner rather than later.
Communists with money to spend on pet projects, and retirement fund sinecures to endow, are clearly more attractive than their Soviet predecessors.
That’s funny. I also get accused of being a capitalist apologist by the hard left, and now the hard right is chiming in with communist apologies.
But in China they have learnt from Russia’s Cold War failures to outspend the U.S by have the political will and resources to outspend the U.S.
I cant see the logic of saying that if we want to escape the clutches of China, we must align ourselves with the USA. If we were attacked by China, would the US come to our aid? I think not.They wont risk all those body-bags just for a little country like NZ.
And if we are on our own there is no point in increasing our defences. How long could we last, putting up the best possible defence? A week? We need to be absolutely neutral, like Switzerland and simply contribute to UN peacekeeping missions.This would indicate that we have no aggressive intent, and would not go to war simply to support the US.
Great comment. Lets start standing up and doing what we are good at negoitating peace agreements. Problem is we have jumped to the bully boy of the worlds commands too many times.
A direct attack on NZ is quite pointless from a military/ political POV unless the you are wanting to attack Oz as the logistics tail will long along with the amount of equipment and manpower required to mount the attack on NZ.
The Indirect attack on NZ will achieve the greatest affect IRT economy of means and effort to achieve the military and political goal of destroying NZ means to wage war or sustain it economic means in war or supporting its allies via its export of primary goods.
To achieve my endstate I will use:
Using 5 Direct Action Teams to attack-
The Hydro cracker at Marsden Pt and the unloading point or even better if there is a oil tanker alongside,
RNZAF Base Auckland main targets will be 5 and 6SQNs.
Devonport dockyard all ships alongside and if possible the drydock locks and last
Both ends of the Cook Strait cable which will knock out about 60% of power supply to the Nth lsland and degrade power supply to the whole of the Nth lsland
Submarines to attack NZ Sea Lane Of Communtions around NZ waters attacking all ships.
Laying of sea mines at all NZ ports.
Cyber warfare attacks at major infrastructure aka dams, hospitals, power supply etc.
Conduct Bio Warfare at NZ primary producers aka foot and mouth, PSA M Bovis etc.
My total footprint in the ground in NZ will be between 120 and 200 personal with between 40-50% of my TOE conducting offensive operations with the rest providing logistics support. For Sea operations I will need a number Ocean going fishing trawlers of mine laying, recon, force extraction vessels. Between 15- 30 Submarines depending on what mth I will attack for surge operations and later reducing to about 5- 10 Submarines for ongoing operations.
Of course they have exerted influence on our politicians, you don’t give large amounts of money to a party and not get someone back for it.
But listening to Hooten and that Labour party hick on national radio this morning, talking about ‘rogue states’ when we know tht the biggest rogue state in the world is the United States is sickening. Noam chomsky acknowledged that a long time ago.
Ron Mark is a war mongerer – when are we going to have proper surveillance of our fisheries – much more important.
We here in NZ need to preserve our sovereignty, in the past 50-60 years we have had successive Governments prostituting ourselves to the likes of the USA, UK & China ?
The purchase of NZ Housing by Chinese National’s is effectively purchases by the Chinese Government as these houses are basically owned by the Chinese Government if they wished to repossess them for whatever reason ?
Lets be realistic, we are a tiny blip in the pacific, NZ wouldn’t stand a chance against larger military forces, we are better off being a neutral country and use our military for humanitarian roles like we have been doing.
The chinese wouldn’t just focus their attention on National, its a two horse race but you can stack the deck if your attention is on both parties.
Labour seems to have changed its tune after the election on this issue too.
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