China hedges bet against NZ with new Romania Dairy Deal as they raise complaints about NZDF
China does this…
China Opens $70 Billion Dairy Market Access to Romanian Makers
Bloomberg
…as they attack NZ…
China lodges ‘serious protest’ over NZ Air Force’s conduct in its air space
China says it has lodged a serious complaint over the New Zealand Air Force’s alleged repeated harassment near its airspace, which the Defence Force denies.
TVNZ
…criticising us about airspace when China sent a flotilla through the Tasman Sea last year and started live firing which threatened commercial flights is a tad rich.
By bringing in more Dairy, China is hedging its bets against NZ and could easily flex muscle by using our economic dependence against us.
Academics suggest this complaint against the NZDF could be a hint of something deeper…
China’s complaint over NZDF ‘harassment’ could be sign of other concerns: Expert
A global security expert said China’s complaint, over what it calls the New Zealand Airforce’s repeated “harassment” near its airspace, could be sign of Beijing’s other concerns with New Zealand foreign policy settings – including its attitude towards the war in the Middle East.
Spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Guo Jiakun said that a P-8A anti-submarine patrol aircraft of the New Zealand Air Force recently conducted repeated close-in reconnaissance and harassment in the airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea.
Guo claimed that New Zealand’s actions had disrupted the order of civil aviation in the relevant airspace.
A spokesperson for the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) said New Zealand’s P-8A maritime patrol aircraft has been undertaking activities that monitor North Korean sanctions evasions at sea in North Asia under UN Security Council resolutions, which it has contributed to since 2018.
The University of Otago’s Professor Robert Patman said what appears to be an over-reaction from China to a routine flight could be a sign of something else “irritating the Chinese leadership”.
He pointed to underlying tensions following the joint statement by New Zealand and Australia’s defence ministers in March, which called behaviour by China in the South China sea as unsafe and unprofessional.
Patman said the criticism of China, alongside the absence of any criticism about the US breaking international law in its attacks on Iran, would not have sat well with Beijing.
He said while in the past, Beijing would see New Zealand as more balanced in its foreign policy compared with Australia – whose relationship with the US is “too close” for China’s comfort – that perception of New Zealand may be changing.
RNZ
…there is some legitimacy here in China’s criticism of us, especially over our weak position over America and Israel.
It seems inane that we are in the middle of war games with America as Trump promises war crimes against the Iranian people and has threatened to annihilate a 7000 year old civilisation…
NZDF in wargame based on Russian nuke taking out satellites
The Defence Force has taken part in a wargame with the United States based on a Russian nuclear blast aimed at taking out satellites.
The classified exercise was run by the American space warfighting agency, alongside 60 companies.
About the same time, the government put out a new NZ-US space dialogue that aimed to expand commercial and military space co-operation.
New Zealand had also signed up to “accelerating defence industrial cooperation” through a US-led 16-nation group in the Indo-Pacific.
The US partners of the NZDF – its Space Command and US Space Force – had also released a vision of space in 2040 that imagined China developing an AI-driven ‘Supermind’ that could strike with “unmatched speed and lethality”.
RNZ
…NZ has played this tightrope walk between our Chinese Economic Overlords and our American Politic al Masters for decades now and I think we were able to get away with that because our Pacific region was strategically benign but that simply isn’t anymore.
We need to think seriously about being Independent and what that really means and what that demands because slavishly grovelling to America and Israel while selling milk powder to China isn’t a tightrope we can walk freely any longer because wither Xi or Trump will demand more from us.
