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

Name: Differences with China ‘becoming harder to reconcile’, says New Zealand prime minister
Uploaded: 2021-05-03T06:23:21.000Z
Duration: 1 min 13 s
Description: Differences with China ‘becoming harder to reconcile’, says New Zealand prime minister

New Zealand’s differences with its top trading partner are becoming ‘harder to reconcile’, including on Xinjiang and Hong Kong, the PM says

Her remarks follow recent pressure by allies to embrace the Five Eyes’ expanding remit from an intelligence alliance to a forum for publicly challenging Beijing

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PM Jacinda Ardern says New Zealand will stick to a ‘principles-based approach’ to foreign policy. Photo: AFP

John Power

Published: 2:23pm, 3 May 2021Updated: 9:55am, 4 May 2021

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.

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Differences with China ‘becoming harder to reconcile’, says New Zealand prime minister

“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.

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