Editorial: Top Chinese delegation’s visit to New Zealand came at a critical time for Luxon

Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at a joint press conference in Wellington on Thursday. Photo / Mark Mitchell

EDITORIAL

This week’s visit of Chinese Premier Li Qiang came at a critical time for New Zealand.

There was a delicate tightrope to walk for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, along with other officials and business leaders, during the superpower’s highest-ranking official visit in seven years.

At the top of the agenda for Luxon would’ve been trade, and strengthening economic ties with our biggest export destination.

New Zealand has a sophisticated and far-reaching Free Trade Agreement with China, with dairy exports alone worth about $6.8 billion.

We have relied heavily on trade with the Chinese over recent years – it remains our largest trading partner, with two-way trade worth almost $38b last year.

But growth has slowed since Covid-19 and has struggled to regain ground since the global pandemic.

Before the visit, Luxon admitted the focus would be the economy – in part because that was the focus of Premier Li, a former Chinese Communist Party secretary in Shanghai, in the Chinese system – but also because we could do with more export growth to China.

The thorny issue of Chinese spying, foreign interference and cyber attacks landed with Li and was raised behind closed doors, Luxon says, while protesters made a noise outside the downtown Auckland hotel where the visiting delegation stayed.

With all that is at stake, Luxon was very careful in his language after meeting Li.

He talked about the importance of “leader-level diplomacy” to “supporting a resilient relationship”, enabling New Zealand and China to “co-operate and to raise points of difference”.

“I raised with Premier Li a number of issues that are important to New Zealanders and which speak to our core values, including human rights and foreign interference,” Luxon said.

“New Zealand will continue to engage predictably and consistently with China, including on issues where we disagree.”

While citing Chinese poetry to describe the strength of the New Zealand-China relationship - “Good friends feel close to each other even when they are far apart” - Premier Li had his matters to raise, including Aukus, with China having been open about its concerns over the security and military agreement as New Zealand considers taking part in Pillar 2.

But while Luxon said about half their time together during the bilateral meeting was spent on areas where the two countries disagreed, the pair did oversee the signing of a number of agreements improving market access to China.

It is indeed a delicate dance that the Government has to perform as it looks to get the economy back on track, and it will see China playing a large role in that.

It just has to ensure the price is right.