Is NZ jumping out of the Chinese fire and into the Indian frying pan?
New Zealand’s pivot away from China is accelerating — but the real question is whether replacing one global power with another actually solves anything, or simply swaps one set of risks for another.
As NZ desperately scrambles to geopolitically decouple from China (right when Trump’s America is doing more to destabilise the economy than Beijing ever has), we are bewilderingly attempting to make India our new China!
Is India really a safer trade partner than China?
But is India a trading alternative from an authoritarian regime with questionable human rights practices or is India another authoritarian regime with questionable human rights practices?
Arundhati Roy: The dismantling of democracy in India will affect the whole world
I thank the Charles Veillon Foundation for honouring me with the 2023 European Essay Award. It may not be immediately apparent how delighted I am to receive it. It’s even possible that I am gloating. What makes me happiest is that it is a prize for literature. Not for peace. Not for culture or cultural freedom, but for literature. For writing. And for writing the kind of essays that I write and have written for the past 25 years.
They have mapped, step by step, India’s descent (although some see it as an ascent) into first majoritarianism and then full-blown fascism. Yes, we continue to have elections, and for that reason, in order to secure a reliable constituency, the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party’s message of Hindu supremacism has relentlessly been disseminated to a population of 1.4 billion people. Consequently, elections are a season of murder, lynching and dog-whistling – the most dangerous time for India’s minorities, Muslims and Christians in particular.
It is no longer just our leaders we must fear, but a whole section of the population. The banality of evil, the normalisation of evil is now manifest in our streets, in our classrooms, in very many public spaces. The mainstream press, the hundreds of 24-hour news channels have been harnessed to the cause of fascist majoritarianism. India’s Constitution has been effectively set aside. The Indian Penal Code is being rewritten. If the current regime wins a majority in 2024, it is very likely that we will see a new Constitution.
It is very likely that the process of what is called “delimitation” – a reordering of constituencies – or gerrymandering as it is known in the US, will take place, giving more parliamentary seats to those Hindi-speaking states in North India where the BJP has a base. This will cause great resentment in the southern states and has the potential to balkanise India. Even in the unlikely event of an electoral defeat, the supremacist poison runs deep and has compromised every public institution that is meant to oversee checks and balances. Right now, there are virtually none, except a weakened and undermined Supreme Court.
…I’m not sure moving our trade from an Authoritarian Communist Regime that is committing cultural genocide and mass repression to a Racial Supremacist State that is committing hate crimes is really all that much of a win for New Zealand ethically.
Our trade is jumping out of the Chinese pan and into the Indian fire while our American Capitalist masters demand more heat.
India doesn’t want our Dairy, they want access to NZ for their citizens.
Modi may well be a race baiting extremist who is bordering on authoritarian overlord, but he ain’t no fool! India’s own subsidies on food to ensure they can feed their own massive population is a far more national strategic goal than allowing a tiny farm deep in the South Pacific to sell them food to undermine their own farmers.
We don’t produce anything they want, what we do have is literal population space, and that’s what they want!
India wants more path ways to residency and they want more educational opportunities to study in NZ, that are then linked to pathways to residency.
Seeing as NZ is already overrun with exploitative migrant New Zealanders who exploit their own fellow migrant citizens (supported by a low wage addicted host population happy to exploit both), that seems like a rotten deal all around.
What New Zealand actually needs from an India trade deal
What we should be doing is focusing on our woeful skills shortage and when I say skills shortage I don’t mean importing Indian students to be exploited at the local bottle shop or Tobacco retailers, I mean bringing in more engineers and drs. NZ Universities should have Campuses set up in India that allow Indian students to upgrade their so they can pick up skilled jobs in NZ.
The easiest solution to the problems of mass exploitation (which undermines working conditions for domestic workers and immediately generates cultural resentment) is Universal Union membership for all migrant workers coming across the border to ensure basic working standards and that they are paid the same as domestic workers.
That way you protect the migrant worker and you reassure the domestic worker that they aren’t being undermined.
There are ways to make the Free Trade Deal with India work, universal union membership is one of them.
Simply allowing more Indian students to come to NZ to be exploited here with no real promise of residency or high skilled job is a disservice to them as guest and an abuse of us as hosts.
But the wider question of the Authoritarian nature of Modi remain.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a third term in office in June 2024. The authorities continued to discriminate against members of minority communities. Officials failed to take adequate action against BJP supporters responsible for attacks, and instead targeted victims of the violence, including through unlawful demolitions of Muslim homes and properties. Government critics faced politically motivated prosecutions under tax and foreign funding regulations, and the draconian counterterrorism law.
Indian authorities failed to end the ethnic violence in the northeast state of Manipur, which has killed over 200 people and displaced more than 60,000 since May 2023.
Several foreign governments accused Indian intelligence agencies of targeting terrorism suspects and separatist leaders for assassination in Canada, the United States, and Pakistan. In October 2024, Canada’s national police service issued a public statement on the alleged role of Indian state agents in criminal activity on Canadian soil, including homicide, extortion, and other violence. Indian authorities also canceled visas or denied entry to government critics, including members of the diaspora.
Despite the Modi administration’s deteriorating human rights record, several countries strengthened strategic and economic ties with India. However, in January the European Parliament adopted a resolution that raised urgent human rights concerns, including “violence, increasing nationalistic rhetoric and divisive policies” against minorities. In May, for a second consecutive year, the United Nations-linked Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions deferred accreditation to India’s National Human Rights Commission.
Trading a third world shithole dicatatorship for a third world shithole democracy is a step up…
Hipkins said he would sign up, but warned NZ (i.e. “business”) that it would be a problem that would become apparent in 20 years time. That guy is such a brain-free space he’s not even a useful anything. What you’re calling for is a return to pre ’80 industrial relations (and I entirely am with you there, because that’s how a nation is built so that that thieves have something to sell off later!) so the exact opposite of Hipkins. Who’s capable of offering that? People of a certain age will vote for the profit phase of a problem they will never live to see. They control the narrative on TV, in the news, on bus station advertisements, shopping malls, and in daily language. It’s about the economy, they say, which really means its about greed and profit at all cost: Straight lines from A to Z, and to hell with anyone or anything that gets in the way. When has it ever been about anything but the economy in our lifetime? Read The Standard for a dose of backward-looking oldies. Crying over Helen, crying over Jacinda, talking about TOP being in coalition with Labour – fuck me get a grip. Unless you can get The Greens to do a complete collective identity revamp, offer an alternative that everyone except nearly retired old folks and “sorted” psychopaths want, deal only with at-hand real NZ issues, and launch an election campaign to boot, its done, man. The neolibs won, and that means NZ is just being cut up into little pieces to be sold off, and the impoverished population handed over to foreign countries to watch die. While we’re waiting to die, the voting for the moment choices remain Greens, Maori, and those other people – whatever remains of the Alliance. That’s it man. The alternatives are illegal.
TDB has it in a nutshell. “India doesn’t want our dairy, they want access to NZ for their citizens”, & “We don’t produce anything they want, what we do have is literal population space”! These are not racist remarks. I find Indian folk respectful, and hard working, while bending the rules to suit. NZ is NOT ‘little India’ it is our country. Even Luxon’s FTA has opened more immigration doors. Our stats tell us that NZ’s Indian population in 2011 was 155k; in 2024 it’s 292k, an increase of 22%. In the world, 35.42m Indians live outside of India. Their lack of space is not our problem and shouldn’t become so. Time for NZ to reset its immigration guidelines.