The PMs recent visit to China shows that China are still attuned to using its soft power to maintain the relationship and while many pundits applauded the visit, surely our interaction with China is utterly dependent upon China gaining what it wants via soft power.
Could it not be argued that the moment China doesn’t gain what it wants via soft power it will change tactics?
Look at the recent ratcheting up of the territorial friction with the Philippines…
Duterte threatens ‘suicide mission’ if Beijing oversteps in South China Sea
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to send his troops on a “suicide mission” if Beijing doesn’t “lay off” a Manila-occupied island in the South China Sea.
Duterte’s speech at a rally in the city of Puerto Princesa in Palawan came days after the Philippine government claimed as many as 275 Chinese boats and ships had been spotted in recent months around Manila’s Thitu Island in the Spratly Island chain.
…China will continue using soft power to get what it wants, but NZ shouldn’t be surprised if China changes tactics if that soft power doesn’t get them what they want.
Becoming economically reliant on China is not a position we want to remain in, because this relationship isn’t going to get easier here…
Anne-Marie Brady case: Jacinda Ardern pushes back on Oz claim
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has pushed back on claims out of Australia that intelligence assessments pointed the finger at China’s spy agency as being behind the burglaries of Anne-Marie Brady.
A year-long New Zealand police investigation into the affair, looking into three burglaries of the home and office of the University of Canterbury professor, was closed in February with the case officially described as “unresolved”.
But last night Australia’s Four Corners current affairs TV show said conclusions had been reached behind closed doors in Canberra.
“Government sources have confirmed to Four Corners that intelligence assessments identified China’s spy service as the prime suspect behind the intimidation of Brady,” the programme said.
…or here…
Creswell NZ sounds like a New Zealand owned company doesn’t it?
It’s not. In fact it is owned by Nongfu Spring Co., Ltd a massive Chinese bottling company and last year our Government allowed them to buy the land to build a massive 16,800m2 water bottling mega-plant at Otakiri in the Bay of Plenty .
If not stopped it will extract 550 million litres water a year put it in milliions of plastic bottles and shp it overseas
It’s NOT internationally benign, Martyn, and you know it; talk about wilful ignorance.
It will only remain “our” “fwend” as long as the PRC is running the Beehive (and it is).
We can’t leave much imprint on a vast country… but it is a two way street… and it is a two way street with a- to about v, or w… …the rest of the world has a lot of collective power… no empire could possibly contain the lot- for long…
The NZ Dairy Industry has become heavily reliant on manufacturing Milk Powder for China, hence it is in a vulnerable position should China alter the tilt or shape of the playing field ?
The NZ Dairy Industry needs to diversify and expand into other markets and decrease it’s reliance on China ?
Yes Martyn,
China has a vision to be the major force in the south pacific so we are regarded as a minnow, and china eats minnows before they are big fish.
“Could it not be argued that the moment China doesn’t gain what it wants via soft power it will change tactics?
Look at the recent ratcheting up of the territorial friction with the Philippines”…
Yeah, well. Diversifying with in an asset class is not diversification. Money is what makes civilization possible, yet we’re never taught about it properly. The complete ignorance about money is responsible for the popularity of idiotic ideologies like monopolies.
I hope Duterte leads the suicide mission
NZ needs to remain a neutral country and not a USA Lap Dog which is what National & John Key wanted ?
NZ government should remain good friendly relations with all countries, but stop selling their people out by allowing the rich to come into NZ and buy land assets and strategic resources like water and control agriculture and increasingly construction.
Some companies like tech, probably doesn’t matter who owns them. But giving away water rights during climate change, does as does our complete outsourcing to the US of NZ defence and intelligence, aka no wonder we didn’t know about rainbow warrior and Tarrent massacre, because our defence has not been about protecting NZ Nationals for a long time now!
The Global Times observation is salutary that “as a small island country in the South Pacific, New Zealand is naturally insecure and that makes it difficult to give up the protection of the US and Australia. Its real dilemma is the hijacking of its largest trading relationship by the US and Australia. China needs to take action so that New Zealand does not follow their policy toward China”.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12220815
Wake up, No Zealand… or keep sleepwalking into the Dragon’s maw…
If a leader of a fairly insignificant group of islands can tell the chinese to f*ck off (and clean up your mess before you leave) then I’m sure more prominent figures can do the same.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/111890924/fiji-revokes-big-chinese-resorts-rights
Aunty Jacinda has already stepped up by shutting our front door a bit more than it has been.
It was something of a risk and there were murmurs at the time from china about NZ being ‘difficult’ but here we are – still trading with them.
We know that Fonterra are already in bed with them – they’ve got massive factories in China, and let’s not forget the Oravida scandal with JC and co.
You don’t have to dig too deep to find evidence of many more ties with this country.
The question remains – do we actually need china?
Yes – we trade with them, yes we sell a lot of product to them – but china isn’t the world – there are plenty of other countries to do business with.
NZ did quite well in the days before we started to import millions of tonnes of chinese crap.
Heaven forbid we lose trading ties – we might even go back to producing our own products!
NZ did quite well in the days before we started to import millions of tonnes of chinese crap.
Heaven forbid we lose trading ties – we might even go back to producing our own products!
Yeah, because you were part of that small group of Anglo Saxon countries that fucked over the rest of the world, including China.
But that is in the past.
Going forward, New Zealand, as with any other country, has to be able to buy all that high tech stuff we are addicted to, the latest whizz bang cancer drugs, etc.
So we need to trade. Maximising our relationship with China does not mean we try and do the same with other countries as well (in any case many of those countries economies are also intertwined with the chinese economy). Its just that the Chinese economy is the biggest and fastest growing by a country mile and they have a long range plan to continue their growth over the next 50 years, and we have access to it and relative geographical proximity.
It would be great to have similar trade deals with Europe and the US, but are these places growing at the same rate – and more importantly will they be happy to sign with us the same sort of trade deal we got with China? And even if so, are the EU and the USA ‘benign’?
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