China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi to visit New Zealand and Foreign Minister Winston Peters next week

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit New Zealand next week for the first high-level face-to-face meetings between the countries since the new coalition government took power.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced Wang’s upcoming visit, saying it would be an opportunity to discuss how the two countries could work together.

“We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s most important and complex,” Peters said.

It was 10 years since the New Zealand-China Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was signed during President Xi Jinping’s visit to New Zealand in 2014.

“It is timely therefore to discuss how New Zealand and China can best work together over the next decade, while building a strong understanding of our respective perspectives,” Peters said.

Peters will host Wang for a bilateral meeting and an official dinner in Wellington.

Wang will also visit Canberra in Australia on what will be his first trip to the two countries in seven years.

Wang last visited New Zealand in 2017, and prior to that in 2014. He and Peters know each other from the latter’s time as foreign minister from 2017 to 2020 and the pair had a phone call in December last year, after Peters was reappointed to the same position.

Peters said the two ministers will discuss regional and global issues, including the importance of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

Wang is also the director of the Foreign Affairs Commission Office of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee.

It will be a chance for China to assess the new government’s outlook on the relationship between the two countries and issues such as the One China policy.

It comes as the coalition government weighs up whether it will join Pillar 2 of the Aukus agreement, the defence pact between Australia, the US and UK.

China has previously been critical about New Zealand’s consideration of joining Pillar 2. New Zealand officials recently had briefings from Australian officials about the Aukus agreement, and Defence Minister Judith Collins discussed it with visiting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Bonnie Jenkins.

Last month, the Chinese Embassy in New Zealand was critical of a joint statement signed between Peters and Collins and their Australian counterparts Penny Wong and Richard Marles which covered Aukus and criticised China for the erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong, and the repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Late last year, former prime minister Sir John Key spoke informally to Wang about the new National-led coalition and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Key had met with Wang in China to raise concerns on behalf of Zespri about unlicensed growing of golden kiwifruit with top Chinese politicians in Beijing.

At the time, Key told the Herald he had told Wang that he could not speak for the government, but “successive New Zealand prime ministers have worked hard to build a good relationship with China”.

In a statement published by the Chinese Embassy in New Zealand soon after that meeting, Wang noted Key’s approach to China in his time as prime minister and said China was ready to establish good relations with the new government.

“Mutual respect and mutually beneficial co-operation between China and New Zealand fully serve the interests of the country and people of New Zealand, and the sustained and steady growth of bilateral relations has also injected stable factors into the region. China is ready to establish good working relations with the new government of New Zealand, strengthen high-level exchanges, jointly open a new chapter in the China-New Zealand comprehensive strategic partnership and work for new achievements in China-New Zealand co-operation.”