Kiwis queue at petrol stations as higher fuel prices loom, trouble at home takes wind from Chris Hipkins' sails, and crazy weather is predicted to hit before the weekend in the latest headlines.
Video / NZ Herald / Dean Purcell / Cameron Pitney / Getty / Supplied / NIWA
Opinion by Matthew Hooton
Matthew Hooton has more than 30 years’ experience in political and corporate strategy, including the National and Act parties.
The Prime Minister must wish he could find a Government that deserves him.
Since January, Chris Hipkins has hardly put a foot wrong. His bread-and-butter, everyman persona is perfectly pitched to the median voter of the post-Covid era.
After five years overseeing failing education and health systems, excessively cruelCovid regulations and a bloated public service unable to deliver the Government’s key promises, Hipkins has turned out to be a much better Prime Minister than Minister of Education, Health, Covid-19 or Public Service.
With his China trip, he’s now proven himself a masterful diplomat.
As with domestic politics, Hipkins’ down-to-earth diplomatic style may lack the bounciness, effervescence and glamour of John Key and Jacinda Ardern, but is exactly what is needed to balance New Zealand’s conflicting economic and security interests given growing rivalry between the dictatorships and democracies.
On security, Hipkins has continued Ardern’s efforts to strengthen our military alliance with Australia; deepen co-operation with our Five Eyes friends, including the US and Britain; build closer relations with Nato, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and other East Asian democracies; become more independent from the corrupt and ineffectual UN Security Council, over which Russia and China have vetoes; and increase military investment.
If it is true that Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta was “harangued” for a whole hour in March when her Chinese counterpart Qin Gang allegedly “turned the dial to Wolf Warrior” at their meeting in Beijing – or even if Mahuta’s diplomatic description of him being “very assertive” and “robust” is more accurate – then she, Ardern, Winston Peters and Hipkins have at least got one thing right over the past five years.
Since 2017, China has negligently – at best – caused a global pandemic and lockdown; cynically supported Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine; dangerously conducted ever-more provocative military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, South China Sea and beyond; blatantly cracked down ever-harder on free speech and other human rights in Hong Kong; unashamedly continued human-rights abuses and ethnocide in Xinjiang; and flagrantly “disappeared” its former President Hu Jintao in front of the world’s media.
Closer to home, China was revealed to have intelligence assets in our two main political parties and imposed trade sanctions on Australia, our only ally, closest friend and most important economic partner.
Whenever Ardern or Mahuta have called China out, it has responded by abusing them and New Zealand, and making threatening statements amounting to interference in our domestic affairs.
Hipkins’ visit was thus not without risk, especially for a foreign-policy novice.
The risks intensified last week when US President Joe Biden – unwisely but accurately – called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator”.
Hipkins prudently declined to agree, while not offering an alternative description. Even the US foreign-policy and defence communities would agree more with how Hipkins formulated his words than their own President.
Similarly, when Hipkins was asked after meeting Xi whether he agreed with the Chinese strongman’s description of New Zealand as “a friend and a partner”, the Prime Minister wisely didn’t contradict the all-powerful leader of our biggest export market, but agreed it was true “by and large” although “it depends on the context”.
The contexts where it is true are those Hipkins has been highlighting: “Our significant economic ties and also people-to-people, cultural connections, and areas of direct bilateral co-operation like trade, education, science and innovation, agriculture and tourism”.
The list is limited because, bluntly, New Zealand foreign-policy makers worry, not without evidence, that China, like all other great powers before it - including most recently the US and the British and French empires but also Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union - is seeking global economic, military and cultural hegemony.
Last week US President Joe Biden – unwisely but accurately – called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator”. Hipkins prudently declined to agree. Photo / AP
For New Zealand, such a future can be imagined as becoming a vassal state to China, supplying its vast population with protein and holidays, but required to stay neutral if and when it launches military adventures.
The best way for China to demonstrate that such fears are misplaced is by stopping insisting that it wants the bilateral economic relationship to become ever bigger and closer.
New Zealanders appreciate that China honoured us with the so-called “Four Firsts”, including its first-ever free-trade agreement with a developed country, but China got something out of them too, including global legitimacy and practice in conducting economic diplomacy with a western democracy.
If China genuinely respects New Zealand’s independence, it will accept that we aren’t so keen on the “Fifth First”, the Belt and Road Initiative, fearing reliance and indebtedness to China for the new infrastructure we desperately need.
On trade, China rightly worries it is too reliant on the US, which takes around 17.5 per cent of its exports. It should thus respect New Zealanders who are even more alarmed that China already takes nearly 30 per cent of our exports, especially given our economic history.
When Britain joined what was then the European Economic Community, precipitating our economic turmoil that followed, it was taking about the same percentage of our exports, 27 per cent, as China does today.
Even if unfounded, New Zealanders fear that for geostrategic reasons, China will one day put that 30 per cent of our exports at risk if we don’t agree the number should keep rising towards vassal-state levels.
For its part, the Government has expanded New Zealand’s free-trade footprint from about 50 per cent of our exports in 2017 to 75 per cent, and says trade will again be a priority for Hipkins when he visits Europe for the Nato summit next month.
Hipkins appears to have got these sorts of ideas across in Beijing. His joint statement with Premier Li Qiang doesn’t use words like “closer”, “greater”, “more” or “bigger”.
Encouragingly, it reads more as two countries in a steady state, with more to do but broadly happy with the extent of their economic relationship relative to others.
If that reflects China’s long-term intentions towards New Zealand, then the doves or panda-lovers in our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade will be right and its hawks or Yankee-lovers wrong.
Even the hawks and Yankee-lovers see that as the best outcome, and Hipkins has made some progress towards it.
What a shame, then, that another of his arrogant, incompetent and – in this case – exceptionally over-rated subordinates, Justice Minister Kiri Allan, overshadowed him.
