KEY POINTS:
It is becoming routine: another high-ranking visitor from China, another suspension of a civil liberty. This time it is the liberty of a New Zealand Chinese journalist. Last time, and the time before that, it was the right of Chinese in New Zealand to protest that was severely
restricted.
The journalist, Nick Wang, is accredited to the press gallery at Parliament, which should be enough to establish his credentials. On Monday he took up a general invitation to the media to cover a handshake between the visiting Vice-Premier of the People's Republic, Zeng Peiyan, and New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Cullen. When he got there security officers assigned to the Vice-Premier's party told him that he was not welcome.
There is not much doubt the officers were acting at the request of the Chinese. One said she had been told Wang was a member of Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that strangely obsesses the Chinese leadership. Another told Wang the Chinese were likely to cancel the event if he remained.
Fortunately he has these exchanges on film, otherwise Dr Cullen's version of events might have been accepted. The Deputy Prime Minister, speaking in the cause of diplomacy perhaps, said there had been a misunderstanding over available space, and Wang was removed because he "got himself overly wound up on the matter".
If this was an isolated incident we too might be at risk of being "overly wound up", but it is not. It is becoming a pattern when China's leading figures visit countries such as New Zealand. It might have been excusable when the People's Republic was first opening to the West, but those days are 30 years past. A generation of Chinese leaders has been exposed to Western liberties and still we have this overly sensitive nonsense when a protester comes into view.
It seems to be considered offensive to the dignity of China for its figures of authority to be exposed to a disrespectful placard. If that is so, Chinese officialdom has to realise its sensitivity is untenable. Liberal democracy is no longer a Western preserve. It also now prevails in Eastern Europe, Latin America and East Asia, China excepted. If Beijing wants to engage with the democratic world at all, its leaders must develop a thicker hide.
That seemed to be happening a few years ago when the People's Republic was seeking membership of the World Trade Organisation and had to run the gauntlet of protest in the United States.
When its entry was agreed, China accepted a phased opening of its markets by the beginning of this year. Now that the transition is over, any further liberalisation is up to the party bosses in Beijing.
Like most governments, they see little prospect now of a conclusion to the WTO's Doha Round and look to advance their interests through bilateral free trade agreements. New Zealand seems to be at the top of their list.
The prospect of an agreement received impetus from the visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in April last year, and after nine negotiating rounds hopes are high for a conclusion by April next year. Little wonder the hosts wanted nothing to upset the Vice-Premier's visit this week.
Little wonder, too, that the Green Party, perennially opposed to free trade agreements, seems to go out of its way to antagonise China's visitors. But if Green MPs want to flourish a Tibetan flag for their own purposes, that is their right.
It is a free country, or should be, even when China's high and mighty are here. Their sensitivity to insults abroad only demonstrates how repressive of free speech they remain. They are taking an eternity to realise that the best way to answer that criticism is to permit it.
