Earnestly encouraging New Zealand to join the nascent AUKUS security pact in a recent piece, The Strategic Case for New Zealand to Join AUKUS, little attention is given to the prospect from the AUKUS perspective.
Although certainly multi-faceted benefits await for New Zealand, several hazards demand attention.
Already a member of the 5-Eyes intelligence alliance with the United States, United Kingdom Australia and Canada, the perception of the Kiwi participation as a ‘soft underbelly’ of the alliance vulnerable to exploitation by the CCP inspired calls for New Zealand’s expulsion. Partly due to claims of the New Zealand political system compromised by CCP influence, enthusiasm for expanding the new security pact’s awkward acronym to ‘ANZUKUS’ remains anaemic in some quarters.
Unfortunately, such claims of compromise are not without base. Ministers at the highest levels of the New Zealand government included individuals from none other than the CCP’s military intelligence. The Yang Jian affair described at length by Prof. Brady’s report details privileged access by the CCP’s agent to the former National Party government strategic plans and policies. Not to be outdone, the Labour Party’s Jacinda Ardern slogan, “Let’s Do It”, originated with a United Front operative Raymond Huo — a CCP instrument for spreading propaganda and influence leveraging Chinese diaspora on other sovereign soils.
Meanwhile, a third of New Zealand global trade in dairy, timber and meat head to the Chinese mainland while CCP-tied technology proliferates across New Zealand. Superficially a food-for-tech exchange, the CCP enjoy powers of surveillance via CCTV installations in New Zealand government offices. Hikvision — a ‘running dog’ manufacturer of surveillance technologies enabling systematic violations of human rights in Xinjiang — must by CCP law provide any data crossing their network to their communist masters. This is evidently not an issue for the New Zealand government. Nothing will be done about them unlike in Australia and other countries despite their discovery years ago.
Recently, a controversial ‘innocent weather balloon’ that ‘accidentally’ wandered over U.S. military installations benefited from trial launches years ago on Chinese-owned New Zealand dairy farms. Around the same time, another trial balloon of NZ-PLA military cooperation heralded the beginning of a ‘strategic partnership’. Ostensibly focused on regional security and shared missions with the UN, New Zealand soon found its regional concerns threatened by a Solomon Islands security pact with the CCP. Eventually, the NZ foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta decried it as a ‘concerning’ development but only after substantial criticism noting Mahuta’s lack of regional engagement.
Other events prove more promising for an ‘ANZUKUS’ evolution. Then Prime Minister Ardern’s attendance at the NATO summit last year or the expected Hipkins attendance this year may brighten the prospect. Yet, after CCP declarations of displeasure some backpedaling with appeasements on the sidelines at APEC emerged. Evidently New Zealand overtures to NATO or other blocks must be calibrated to avoid any repeats of the Australian experience for NZ-Chinese exports.
Ironically, the Chinese partner already demonstrated duplicity with, for instance, theft of intellectual property from New Zealand agribusiness Zespri for their prized kiwi fruit strain. Despite favourable judgement in New Zealand, there is no legal recourse in China for Zespri — that may in fact be forced to partner with the pirate Chinese growers. Overall impact of kiwi fruit to NZ agricultural exports are minor, but the incident is indicative. The CCP shields such IP exfiltration and even encourages it. Significant impact analogous to the birth of Huawei from the stolen CISCO router technology may affect a major New Zealand export industry. Although, apparently, this has already happened. Former Foreign Minister Winston Peters in an interview in 2018 noted the Chinese effectively control the NZ infant formula business from production to marketing. The headlong rush into the free trade agreement with China and its expansion by the Ardern government in 2019 entails economic — and geopolitical — penalties without overtures to any block, NATO or otherwise.
Delicate dancing on the fence between the CCP and ‘the West’ including 5-Eyes, NATO and AUKUS displays an increasingly conflicted and untenable New Zealand strategy. Claimed efforts to insulate the modest New Zealand economy from CCP retaliations for flirtations with NATO et. al. ironically overlook damage already afflicting the Kiwi partner. Given this asymmetric and abusive relationship with a CCP-compromised New Zealand government and hollowing-out of key industries, overtures to NATO, AUKUS or other Western blocks smack of sweet nothings whispered over the fence. Allaying suspicions for AUKUS over the devotion of New Zealand to her CCP partner will require more substantial effort than simply floating a few trial balloons.
OMG Daily Telegraph – you’re pushing the standard US imperialistic narative against China?? So which countries have China invaded in the last 60 years? None. Have they dropped any nuclear bombs on cities? No. Have they been a peaceful, friendly partner to NZ and improved our standard of living by being our top trading partner? Yes.
Some good points here. I’ve always found the NZ-China relationship confusing. The government regularly adopts an anti-China stance in public but the CCP never seems to punish NZ in return
The world is full of beautifull plants “stolen” from chinese soil. Look at our garden and parks and trees.
And also the west stole ” gun powder” from the chinese. Not that we were better off with it though. It only brought harm to many
The world history is made of spying and stealing from each other…..
And like waves, civilisations rise and decline, that is the natural way of things and nobody can change that
We do not need to join this folly, even in the very unlikely event that we are threatened by a foreign power the US and AU would not let NZ fall for strategic reasons.
US foreign policy is dirty tactics all the way. They’re not our freinds. They are guilty culprits of theiving and plundering.
USAMO. They’re going to loose Ukraine. They’ll loose, Taiwan, too; but such mayhem and hatred.. goddam the neocon… nothing good will come of it. And we will feel the sting in lil ol egalitarian AotearoaNZ. We don’t need it. We should working for multipolarity. Not war. War solves nothing. BRICS, not NATO. But then, speaking to neocon insanity and timing; whatever covd is, came from under that same yankee wing. And whatever was in that experimental toxin they smashed into as many arms as they could before the HARMS data came home to roost, all adds up to DC not giving too much of a hoot as to how many people are going to die because of them.