And we are not a vassal of the USA/UK, helping fight their wars for gains coverted by their elite.
Boer war, WWI, WWII, American war in Korea, Malaysian war skirmish, American wars in Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia, Iraqi bombing and looting of oil combined with Afganistan invasion together casting close to 1.5 million lives, and now calls to have us backing. NATO.
NZ should never oppose China on behalf of the USA/UK.
Our foreign policy supposedly is one of independence.
We are indeed a vassal puppet.

John – I don’t want to labour any point, and to be clear I am neither qualified nor experienced to comment on the particulars of NZ foreign policy.
The point I make is thus: have a look at the last 10 minutes of the Athens affair YouTube link I put up above. Understand what an actor that has full access to your mobile networks can do, extrapolate forward to see the leverage it can give, and then understand that this is precisely what Huawei gives China.
Who needs violence when you can shut down a countries infrastructure at will. Every nation with said vendor becomes a vassal. Instantly.

Boris I appreciate you laying out you perspective but several points need examining.
The USA and NZ have an independent relationship although diplomatic and fiscal strings are pulled to take that away from us.

The assumption that China is aggressive and the USA is not is seriously flawed.
You would need some fairly comprehensive evidence for that proposition to be considered.

Apologies if I skim read your comment because there is no point I crying over spilt milk now. What I mean by that is Telecom, New Zealand formerly publicly-owned communications provider got the sold and privatised which means National Security is not the primary concern of Telco Boards and shareholders but that’s okay.

In this new area of big power games where China is strong and everyone else is weak, it is not enough to place a policy on the table and say to everyone look, we are better than the Chinese. As far as Defence Theory and Defence Practices goes in the twenty-first century, it doesn’t matter who the representative is, it could male patriarchy, it could be fembots, LGBT+ all the feminist hysteria, robots, whatever. All that matters is (and the primary word here is) “access” to housing security, water security, job security, and that will take economic growth, and for that, we will require access to the Asian markets and it is as simple as that.

A tale of 2 narratives. You can cite your sources if you like.
And don’t just say “oh everyone knows this” – it makes you look like a dick.

One of Cletus’s friends here. He asked me to comment as I work near the security space and am a little better placed to comment than he.
As for telecommunications being a no go area. In 2018, half of the 4G network of one operator (of 4 in total) went down for a total of 18 hours. One half was Ericsson, the other half Nokia. It was due to an expired certificate in a part of the network called the MME (mobility management entity if you’re interested) – thats one half of one third (you have 2G, 3G and 4G) of one network in the UK – for 18 hours. It caused a meltdown. Now you can imagine that the security forces – GCHQ and MI6 – were all over it, wanting to know what happened. It wasn’t malicious, it was a simple security certificate that had expired, and the component stopped working. They got it back up and running, and a couple of lawsuits later it was quietly shelved and everyone forgot about it and life went on.
Except that the disruptive potential didn’t go unnoticed by any of the 5 eyes security establishments. In raw numbers it was around 4% of the total UK mobile network taken offline.
Now the US may be many things to many people, but they are our friends, and things would have to go seriously wrong for them to want to sabotage the networks of a friendly country – China on the other hand has been very clear that they will use whatever means at their disposal to make nations unobstructive to their intentions. You all cite that China hasn’t started wars and doesn’t go around killing people – let me assure you that that is far from the case. They do, and they are doing so with ever more frequency, and with blatant disregard for the consequences.
Telecommunications is one way that, to quote Sun Tzu, they can win the war without firing a shot – and Huawei is the tool they had to do it. They did pour in over USD100Billion to make Huawei what it is today, they do undercut the rivals on any bid they want to win, they do finance the operators to buy their equipment on terms that no other company can match, usually 115% of the cost price, zero interest at 30 year terms, give or take. Imagine if Ericsson or Nokia tried to do that – the investors would leave them in droves.
Now to the risks. Cletus said telecoms is a no go area when selecting kit from potential adversaries. He undercooked that goose. And not by a small amount. There is a maxim in the industry that you are only ever one patch away from a fully compromised system. Now place that system into the control and/or support of a hostile power – NZ and China have a trading relationship – they are not friends or allies. If China become involved in a war, could they call on NZ to help? No. Not under any circumstances would NZ do so. If the US was involved in a war could they call on NZ to help – yes – both in the past, and in the present. So dont try and misrepresent the relationship as being anything other than a trading partner. They are nothing more. The downside risks are as explained above – the presence of Huawei, ZTE, Datang, Sunwave or any of their other vendors gives China quiet leverage. And they use this to every extent possible.
Finally to your point about NSA and secrets – that has nothing to do with radio networks sorry. Radio networks are the LAST place any intelligence organization would use to covertly spy. They OVERTLY spy – and it is all quite legal, in fact it is built into every mobile network specification. It is called CALEA, and it saves a lot of time and effort. No – it is only extreme edge cases where that would be used – the most famous being the “Athens affair” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCU47bJoLho&t=25s – something a friend of mine was involved with. That was a directed exploit against an individual in a foreign country using a 1970’s programming language – there are probably about 5 people in the world who could do that. I digress – spying involves hoovering up everything – that means trunk links – fiber optics and undersea cables, and BGP spoofing to redirect traffic.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjTvNfap9zrAhVPOBoKHUUND7sQFjABegQIJBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fscholarcommons.usf.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1050%26context%3Dmca&usg=AOvVaw0PQzPrWyCN6h7ZeOAseQA3
This describes China’s history in such exploits. Its long and storied.
So – no one can be trusted. But do you want to unload your current ally and jump on boards with an altogether more troublesome one who doesn’t share any of your values and will use their networks as both overt and covert leverage against you – and it has nothing to do with spying – as that is not how spying works – they are in this game primarily for one reason and one reason alone – control.

Your figure of 50 million is a much inflate US guesstimate.
The great leap forward did play a part in the unpreparedness for the floods and seasons of poor rice crops but the crude census after that setback showed there were deaths by starvation but not in the 10s of millions. There were multiple causes and events.

“Three Years of Natural Disasters”.
“There is certainly some truth in this claim. In mid-1959, the Yellow River (or Huang Ho) flooded, causing thousands of drownings and ruined crops. According to government reports, more than 40 million hectares (almost 100 million acres) of agricultural land were rendered useless.

These floods were followed by a wave of further disasters: droughts, severe heat, more floods, typhoons, disease and insect infestations.

In 1959, drought caused significant crop failures in Shaanxi (where output declined by more than 50 per cent) and Hubei (where it fell by 25 per cent). The following year Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong and Henan provinces suffered prolonged droughts, their production falling by more than half.

China’s southern and coastal provinces also endured 11 major typhoons. In 1961, the northern provinces again suffered months of drought, while those in the south endured more flooding.”

Watch out for US propaganda which has raged on for decades since the US was kicked out of China.

https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2011/09/farewell_keith_locke.html

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/the-crippling-weight-of-americas-rising-socialism

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/the-crippling-weight-of-americas-rising-socialism