New Zealand to stay true to values even amid growing differences with China, Ardern says

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday said her country’s differences with top trading partner China were becoming “harder to reconcile”, amid divisions between Wellington and its Western allies over how to manage relations with Beijing.

Speaking at the fourth China Business Summit in Auckland, Ardern said that while the two countries’ differences should not define their relationship, their areas of disagreement were “part and parcel of New Zealand staying true to who we are as a nation”.

“It will not have escaped the attention of anyone here that as China’s role in the world grows and changes, the differences between our systems – and the interests and values that shape those systems – are becoming harder to reconcile,” Ardern said at the event for political leaders, academics and industry players.

“This is a challenge that we, and many other countries across the Indo-Pacific region, but also in Europe and other regions, are grappling with,” she said.

Ardern said New Zealand, which sends nearly one-third of exports to China, had to acknowledge there were issues on which the countries “do not, cannot, and will not agree”.

“This need not derail our relationship, it is simply a reality,” she said.

Australia and New Zealand play down differences over China, Five Eyes

New Zealand would stick to an independent, “principles-based approach” to foreign policy informed by the country’s interests and values, Ardern said.

The New Zealand leader’s remarks follow recent pressure from some of its allies to embrace the “Five Eyes” partnership’s expanding remit from an intelligence-sharing alliance to a forum for publicly challenging China.

Wellington opted out of several joint statements issued by the other Five Eyes members on human rights concerns in Xinjiang province – where activists say some 1 million ethnic minority Uygurs are being detained in re-education camps – and declining rights and freedoms in Hong Kong, choosing instead to issue separate expressions of concern.

Beijing has lashed out at the alliance for its comments, saying it is meddling in China’s internal affairs.

Ardern in her speech said New Zealand had chosen to raise issues of concern either by itself with Beijing both privately and publicly, or on other occasions, with its Five Eyes partners, which include the United States and Australia.

“We have shown this quite clearly over the past year by deliberately choosing when we make public statements on issues of concern, and with whom,” she said.

New Zealand’s parliament on Tuesday is set to look at a motion put forward by a minor party to declare the situation in Xinjiang as a genocide.

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In later remarks on Monday, Ardern said New Zealand had used the term on three occasions, on Nazi Germany, Rwanda and Cambodia, adding that the country had repeatedly called for “unfettered access” to Xinjiang to assess if the situation there met the same legal definitions.

“That is not to say there isn’t credible evidence of human rights abuses already, there is,” she said.

In her speech, Ardern also pointed to areas of cooperation with China, including trade and the Covid-19 pandemic, and said she looked forward to talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Apec Summit later this year.

“Maintaining contact, and promoting understanding, between our two countries and peoples remains a crucial foundation of our relationship,” she said.

New Zealand Minister for Trade and Export Growth Damien O’Connor said he hoped to see recently upgraded free-trade pact between both nations come into force soon.

David Capie, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Victoria in Wellington, said Ardern’s speech was the clearest indication yet that Wellington expected “more bumps in the road” in its ties with Beijing.

“If you had to distil one message to the business community, it might be: ‘buckle up’,” Capie said.

“This was a business summit, so you’d expect a speech heavy with references to economic opportunity, but it was notable how much of the PM’s remarks were the differences New Zealand has with China and how as China’s role in the world grows, those differences are getting harder to reconcile.

“And she made clear that New Zealand sees itself facing the same challenges as other countries in our region and Europe,” he added.

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Capie said New Zealand wished to maintain a good relationship with China and hoped that “being clear and predictable will let it express differences without facing blowback”.

“But the reality is, no one knows what might be the issue or decision that finally tips things over the edge and sees New Zealand in the freezer,” he said.

Robert Patman, a professor of international relations at the University of Otago in Dunedin, said Ardern wished to stress Wellington’s independence from both Beijing and its Western allies.

“By reiterating New Zealand’s support for the international rules-based system, Prime Minister Ardern is making it clear that New Zealand and China could agree to disagree on some issues, but China cannot expect to use its growing role in the world to pressurise states like New Zealand into agreement on Beijing’s terms,” he said.

Wellington also had no intention of “watering down its independent foreign policy and becoming an echo of the views of the other members of the Five Eyes alliance”, he said.

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New Zealand’s relations with China have remained warm compared to neighbouring Australia, whose ties with Beijing have nosedived since Canberra last year proposed an independent inquiry into the origins of Covid-19.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on Monday, Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton said he would not hesitate to call out Chinese aggression in the region, less than a fortnight after warning Australia could not rule out the possibility of conflict with Beijing over Taiwan.

Also addressing the China Business Summit on Monday, Chinese ambassador to New Zealand Wu Xi praised Beijing and Wellington for ensuring the “healthy and stable development” of their relations. Their recent agreement to upgrade and expand a free-trade agreement would create new opportunities for cooperation, she said.

“China and New Zealand can actively explore and foster new growth drivers in health, aged care, education, e-commerce, climate change, science and technology and other fields,” she said.

But Wu also reiterated that Hong Kong and Xinjiang-related issues were China’s internal affairs.

“We hope that the New Zealand side could hold an objective and a just position, abide by international law and not interfere in China’s internal affairs so as to maintain the sound development of our bilateral relations,” she said.

Additional reporting by Reuters