Last month, at the Great Hall of the People on his own inaugural State visit to China, he found a president who was “incredibly smart, incredibly thoughtful, very clear about what he’s wanting to achieve with China and its own domestic agenda and growth”.
With Chinese Premier Li Qiang it was an opportunity to strengthen a very good personal connection forged on his visit to New Zealand last year.
“He very generously hosted us a wonderful state dinner at the end of our trip, which was marvellous.”
Those top-to-top relationships matter. “That’s part of my job as prime minister”.
In an amusing exchange directed to the Chinese Ambassador at the recent China Business Summit, Luxon said, “If you back up a little bit, New Zealand trade with China is 0.3%, Ambassador.
“I think we are your 42nd or 43rd biggest trading partner with 0.3% of all of your trade.
“And so the opportunity for us is to say, ‘Well, if you get it from 0.3 to 0.4 you’ve actually grown our business 25%.’
“So that’s why I say to all New Zealand businesses, when you’re thinking about China, it is a really big market.”
I asked Luxon to expand on this further at the summit.
He emphasises: “ I don’t want it just to be a box-ticking exercise. And actually in the case of both President Xi, Premier Li, different personalities, but, interesting people.
“If you can build a connection with them, I think that it actually helps to be able to then pick up the phone when you need to pick up the phone and have those conversations.
“Once you’ve got relationships in life, and then you start to talk about the opportunities and possibilities of what you might do together, and you put together the plans, then you only get bigger results.
“I’ve always been a big believer of the bigger the relationships, the bigger the results. And if it’s just purely transactional, that doesn’t, doesn’t get you places.”
More Cabinet Ministers will soon be beating the trail to China.
Tourism Minister Louise Upston and Education Minister Erica Stanford are tasked with cementing future growth in tourist and international student numbers.
Says Luxon: “I just want to see an all-of-government approach, where we actually have a good number of ministers cycling through China.
“We need to keep building our literacy and fluency of that market, and part of it is having ministers regularly exposed to and understanding China.”
New Zealand’s global reputation matters. The Prime Minister contends that people want to buy from us. “They want to partner with us. They want to invest here.
“They want to study here, because we’re trusted, because we’re reliable, because we’re safe, and as a Government, we can create the conditions for growth.
“But it’s business leaders that are actually creating that economic growth through their innovation, their ideas and through their execution.”
That underlines the reality that though the Government has set an ambitious target to double the value of New Zealand’s exports by 2034, it will be exporters that deliver on that goal.
“It’s very, very impressive,” Luxon says. “You know, there’s no doubt about it, there are some real areas of expertise. It’s coming through some world-class universities, amazing research programmes, and then obviously being able to convert that technology.
“If you look at electric vehicles, if you look at chips, there’s just huge progress happening in that space.
“And we’ve been talking about that just in the New Zealand sense, in that we need to adopt a lot more technology, science innovation, into our system as well, because that’s ultimately how we’re going to get some of the productivity gains that we’re desperately looking for.
“But it’s just very inspiring ... you know, set a long-term vision and chunk it down into bite-sized bits.
“I kind of like that model and approach that’s something we’ve been less comfortable with, I guess, in New Zealand.”
