Big names on superpower's list of buys

Mainzeal built Auckland's Vector arena. Photo / Greg Bowker

Chinese government businesses already have more than a toehold on our shores.

They control billions of dollars worth of key business assets and are showing a growing appetite to run significant of our economy.

Whiteware, construction, farming and electricity all feature prominently.

A cornerstone share of Fisher & Paykel Appliances, is owned by an arm of China's provincial government.

One of our top-four commercial construction businesses, Mainzeal, is closer to Beijing than Wellington, owned by Richina Pacific which was until recently one of our few NZX-listed Chinese entities, headed by Richard Yang but chaired by Dame Jenny Shipley, a close ally of the Chinese.

She is also chairwoman of Senior Money International and Mainzeal Construction and is a director on China Construction Bank, one of the four major state-owned banks in China.

Vector's Wellington lines and a cornerstone stake in PGG Wrightson are other big Chinese-owned assets.

Some experts believe the Chinese have a lot to learn here, to go the Japanese way, quieter, with joint ventures, raising far less fuss.

Some don't want the Chinese here.

Murray Horton, Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) secretary and organiser, said it was not the Chinese in particular which his group opposed.

"I don't have any specific comment to make about Chinese investors as opposed to those of any other nationality. Our position is the same if they come from Australia, the United States or Britain," he said.

Foreign direct investment via ownership of companies in New Zealand had increased from $9.7 billion in 1989 to $82.7 billion four years ago, over 700 per cent more, CAFCA says.

Foreign owners now control 41 per cent of the share market, it claims.

In response to the bid by Hong Kong stock exchange-listed Natural Dairy (NZ) Holdings to buy the Crafar farms, CAFCA stated: "This is definitely not foreign investment, it's a mortgagee sale. And don't expect our oversight authorities to do anything about it.

"The most unbelievably naive reaction to the news that a mysterious Chinese company is hoping to buy up to $1.5 billion worth of dairy farms came from Federated Farmers, which said that this is an unintended consequence of the NZ/China Free Trade Agreement. Pull the other one."

Horton said: "Off the top of my head, this proposed $1.5 billion dairy farm buy up would be the biggest Chinese investment in New Zealand if it proceeds."

He noted two Chinese applications which had failed: The aborted sale of the Lyttelton Port Company to Hutchison of Hong Kong and the failed attempt by another Hong Kong/Chinese company to buy an iron sands operation which was turned down by the OIO in December 2008.

Last March, Wang Shi, an ex-People's Liberation Army soldier who now leads China's biggest house builder China Vanke, visited Auckland. Vanke has built about 200,000 houses.

He was in Auckland to find out more about eco-friendly residential construction and has been credited with changing China.

The New York Times reported in 2009 that his business provided something which had been unthinkable for ordinary Chinese: the freedom to choose where and how to live and the chance to accumulate wealth.

HOW THEY SEE US

A NZ Trade and Enterprise survey by Nielsen showed Japanese and Chinese businesses:

* Think we are parochial, with an "island attitude".
* Have a low awareness of us as a trading partner.
* Are frustrated by our relaxed attitude.
* Do not see us as strong business partners.
* See their own business world as "survive or die".
* See our focus as more on lifestyle, less international business.
* Japanese like us and Chinese respect us.

TRADE IMBALANCE

* We sell $3 billion worth of goods annually to China, which in return sells us $6.01 billion.
* China is our fourth-largest market, taking 7.1 per cent of all our exports.

WHAT WE SELL CHINA

* Dairy products: $977m
* Wood: $700m
* Baking products: $281m
* Wool: $239m
* Meat: $140m
* Fish and shellfish: $136m

WHAT WE IMPORT FROM CHINA

* Electrical machinery, equipment: $1.2b
* Other machinery: $1b
* Knit apparel: $500m
* Woven apparel: $435m
* Furniture: $273m
* Toys and sports equipment: $240m
* Footwear: $218m

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade