New Zealand is on good terms with China. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, and Minister of Foreign Affairs People’s Republic of China, Wang Yi, met in early March. Photo / Hagen Hopkins, Getty Images
New Zealand is on good terms with China. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, and Minister of Foreign Affairs People’s Republic of China, Wang Yi, met in early March. Photo / Hagen Hopkins, Getty Images
The situation is like pre-WWI. Germany was the new superpower. Russia was aggressive. There was anaval arms race. Nations protected themselves by joining alliances. The treaties obliged countries to come to each other’s aid. Instead of preventing war the treaties caused an incident to escalate into a world war that no country wanted.
Our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, appears to believe that joining alliances is the “best way” to respond to a more dangerous world.
After meeting with the American Secretary of State Winston Peters said: “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid isolation…The New Zealand Government’s job is to engage with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be… and the best way to have the most impact is to work together intensively with other countries that share our values and strategic interests.”
The Government is negotiating possibly joining pillar two of Aukus, a military alliance between Australia, United Kingdom, and the USA. The agreement would give our defense forces access to the latest technical developments needed for interoperability with Aukus militaries.
It is reported that Japan, Canada, South Korea and possibly India may join Aukus.
Before we join an anti-Chinese military agreement, we should ask; is China a strategic threat to New Zealand?
China is by far our most important trading partner. New Zealand has a free trade agreement with China, something we do not have with the US. Losing our trade with China would devastate our economy.
New Zealand is on good terms with China. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, and Minister of Foreign Affairs People’s Republic of China, Wang Yi, met in early March. Photo / Getty Images
New Zealand should welcome China’s interest in the South Pacific. Our Pacific neighbours are some of the poorest countries. The needs of the Pacific are far greater than New Zealand can supply, or the West has been willing to provide.
Chinese aid has been criticised but the Chinese give what the island nations request rather than the aid that the West says they need.
New Zealand does not want any nation militarising the South Pacific. Some island nations fear that Aukus will militarise the South Pacific.
New Zealand has no strategic issues worth antagonising China over.
We wish any Taiwan reunification is peaceful but New Zealand recognises that island is part of China.
New Zealand has concerns over China’s behaviour in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, in Tibet, in Hong Kong and in the South China Sea.
New Zealand is also concerned over India’s behaviour in Kashmir and the assassination of a prominent Sikh activist in Canada. These concerns have not stopped our government from seeking a free trade agreement with India.
If it is “the Government’s job”, as the Foreign Affairs Minister says, “to engage with the world as it is” then we would be basing our defence and trade decisions on our strategic interests.
The Government is seeking to mould public opinion. In a media stunt, co-ordinated with Britain and the US, it was revealed that Chinese hackers, believed to be state-sponsored, hacked Parliament’s computers.
A cyclist waits at a traffic light during the evening rush hour at the main business district in Beijing. China is by far our most important trading partner. Photo / AP
The hack was three years ago. No data of a “strategic or sensitive” nature was taken. Officials waited until Peters was visiting Washington to tell the country.
I was once Parliament’s longest-serving MP. I served on Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. I never learned anything on the committee that I had not already read in the Economist magazine. There are no state secrets on Parliament’s computers.
Only a communist country would think we keep secrets on Parliament’s computers. We probably have a similar misunderstanding regarding China.
Many nations spy. New Zealand is a member of Five Eyes described by Wikipedia as “one of the most comprehensive known espionage alliances in human history”.
Today the New Zealand Defence Force is working with the US in the Red Sea to protect shipping and in Europe to assist Ukraine.
If we decline to join anti-Chinese alliances it remains in the West’s interests to ensure New Zealand has access to technical developments, so our military has interoperability.
Joining alliances means we lose our independent foreign policy that enables this country to decide what our strategic interests are. There may be major unintended consequences.
Should China retaliate, the US is not offering New Zealand a free trade agreement.
No government should abandon 40 years of a bi-partisan independent foreign policy without publishing a white paper. Such a paper would reveal the absurdity of joining a military alliance aimed at our biggest trading partner. China is not a threat to this country. New Zealand has had friendly relations with China for half a century.
If ministers had asked in 1915 what threat is Turkey to this country, then perhaps New Zealanders would not have died at Gallipoli.
- Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and a former member of the Labour Party
