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New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is set to meet China’s President Xi Jinping on Monday in Beijing. Photo: Bloomberg
Opinion
Nicolas Groffman
Nicolas Groffman

How spies help New Zealand stay friendly with China

  • Nicolas Groffman writes that most people outside New Zealand are unaware of the high professionalism of its security, intelligence and espionage services
  • Its spies have helped it engage with China more energetically and efficiently than almost any other non-Asian country

When New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern meets Xi Jinping on Monday in Beijing, she will have been advised by agents of one of the most efficient intelligence services in the world.

Most people outside New Zealand are unaware of how professional its security, intelligence and espionage services are, assuming the country has nothing but rugby, sheep and fresh air.

New Zealand’s spies have particular relevance to its relationship with China: the country has engaged with China more energetically and more efficiently than almost any other non-Asian country, setting out a template for other democratic countries to follow.

It has achieved this mainly through ordinary commercial and diplomatic means, but also through clever use of its intelligence services. New Zealand is, dollar for dollar, the most effective of the Five Eyes (an intelligence alliance that also includes the US, Britain, Canada and Australia).

New Zealand has pursued a robust offensive against both American and Chinese incursions into what it sees as its domain – the Southwest Pacific. At the same time, it has minimised fallout from that offensive, with no repercussions other than a recent Global Times-backed campaign to avoid tourism in New Zealand, which has already failed.

Compare this with Canada, which manages its China relations in the traditional way. Canadian citizens in China have recently been held hostage or even, in one case, sentenced to death as revenge for Canada’s complying with a lawful extradition request from the US, when it detained the Chinese businesswoman Meng Wanzhou.

New Zealand also uses its intelligence services wisely at home (this is partly why the March 15 mosque attacks in Christchurch were so shocking) and has prevented terror organisations and foreign intelligence from operating effectively on its soil.

Many believe that China infiltrates business, education and civil society in foreign countries. In New Zealand, however, the moderate successes China has had in recruiting non-Chinese overseas agents have been either by blackmail or bribery, the two least reliable methods of recruitment.

The rare examples of New Zealanders suffering from perceived Chinese interference are examined rigorously.

Chen Weijian, a pro-democracy activist, blamed Chinese Communist Party activism in New Zealand for the closure of his newspaper there.

A professor was harassed, probably by Chinese government agents, for exposing the efforts of China’s United Front. And, improbably, a New Zealand member of parliament turned out to be an ex-Ministry of State Security agent.

Yet these widely reported and analysed cases are anomalies: three such incidences are relatively few compared to roughly 200 in France in just a year, or more than 1,000 in the US.

A New Zealand intelligence agency warned against using Huawei equipment in the country’s 5G telecoms systems. Photo: AP

New Zealand’s secret intelligence service, called Te Pa Whakamarumaru or NZSIS, was set up in 1956 and reports to Justice Minister Andrew Little.

New Zealand has a military intelligence arm, the Directorate of Defence Intelligence and Security, and for signals intelligence it has the Government Communications Security Bureau, which recently warned against using Huawei’s equipment for 5G.

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The small size of New Zealand’s card-carrying spy services led analysts outside the country to call it “the weak link in the Five Eyes”, as if intelligence sharing was being compromised by New Zealand’s assumed weakness.

In reality, New Zealanders work in other secret services around the world, including Britain’s. Australia’s ASIO, a larger organisation than the NZSIS, “would struggle without NZ, British and US help”, according to a Canberra insider.

New Zealand’s spies ensure that it is safe, and thus is able to deal wholeheartedly with the largest nation on Earth

NZSIS’s work in the field allows New Zealand to behave forcefully towards China. It uses intelligence resources to ensure that New Zealand’s tiny but crafty air and maritime force is in the right place at the right time; it identifies potential hostile elements in China and isolates them, while also finding ways to promote friendly agents.

One example is the exposure of an official in China as having masqueraded as the grandson of a Red Army hero. His resulting removal cleared an obstacle to one of New Zealand’s specific aims in negotiation of its free-trade agreement.

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Interior security has also quietly and regularly unmasked agents in Wellington. Part of New Zealand’s ability to do this lies in its large pool of Chinese-heritage residents; they can attest to the well-meaning nature of the New Zealand polity, and can thus promote its interests in China.

The results speak for themselves: New Zealand has tussled with China in the Southwest Pacific for a decade and has kept it at bay – something the Philippines and Japan have failed to do. It has temporarily banned Huawei, the jewel in China’s telecommunications crown, from engaging in 5G services until it submits to a supervision regime.

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Yet New Zealand has consistently been able to show a friendly face to China. It has several Chinese-language media in China, including Tourism New Zealand’s partnering with Tencent for advertising on WeChat, achieving a 10 per cent click-through rate. It gets more Chinese tourists than India.

Its volume of trade with China (US$18 billion in 2018) exceeds that of Argentina, even though the latter has a population 10 times larger.

Post-Brexit Britain is likely to follow New Zealand’s example of mixing diplomacy and trade with smart security. Photo: AP

China is not the only country that New Zealand feels it must stand up to. Other notable triumphs include the arrest in 1985 of French secret agents who had attacked a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand waters, and successes against American interference.

New Zealand’s spies ensure that it is safe and thus able to deal wholeheartedly with the most populous nation on Earth. It seems likely that post-Brexit Britain will try to follow New Zealand’s example of mixing diplomacy and trade with smart security, because it has invited Kiwi experts to advise it.

Jacinda Ardern, who supervises NZSIS directly, will be well-briefed for her meetings on Monday.

Nicolas Groffman, who practised law in Beijing and Shanghai, is a partner at law firm Harrison Clark Rickerbys in London

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: New Zealand’s secret for friendly relations – its spies
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