Chinese ambassador issues Aukus warning about ‘taking sides’

Ambassador Wang Xiaolong addresses last year's China Business Summit.

China’s ambassador to New Zealand Wang Xiaolong has issued a warning to the Government as it weighs up joining pillar two of the Aukus agreement.

The remarks come after other Aukus partners have spoken about pillar two of the deal, most recently the British High Commissioner Iona Thomas who sought to diffuse tensions last week by saying that Aukus was “not an alliance” and that it was not designed to provoke any one country.

In the speech, delivered to the China Business Summit in Aukland today, Wang said that China believes Aukus is in fact an alliance, and suggested that China found it very provocative.

Wang seized upon recent remarks by US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell which linked Aukus submarines to tensions about the future of Taiwan suggesting linking the Aukus pact to a potential “cross-strait” conflict over Taiwan, the self-governing island that mainland China claims as its own.

“Those have enormous implications in a variety of scenarios, including cross-strait circumstances,” Campbell said of the submarines.

Wang referenced the remarks, saying “you may have noticed that top US diplomats have stated that the purpose of Aukus is to preserve US primacy, and they have openly linked Aukus nuclear submarines with the situation in the Taiwan Strait”.

“This confirms that Aukus is a nuclear-based military-nature alliance clearly and unabashedly designed to maintain US hegemony and contain other countries’ development.

“Joining such an alliance will not make any country more secure or make the Asia-Pacific region more stable”.

New Zealand is a long way from being in a position to sign up to pillar two. There is no clear idea of the pathway for joining the second pillar, and New Zealand would need to be invited first.

But central to the domestic argument for joining is the fact that pillar two is a non-nuclear offshoot of the main deal. It will involve the sharing of advanced technologies in areas like cyber warfare, but will not touch on nuclear technology.

But Wang said that in China’s eyes, pillar two could not be separated from pillar one. He said that Aukus on the whole was bad for nuclear non-proliferation, which is something New Zealand tends to support internationally. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN body charged with monitoring non-proliferation, is so far “satisfied” with the partners’ engagement and has not raised objections to the deal.

“The sole purpose of its “second pillar” is to serve and support nuclear-related military co-operation under the “first pillar”, rather than being an innocent platform for technology sharing.

“Many people in New Zealand and beyond believe that joining such an alliance in whatever form is taking sides,” he said.

Wang said that military alliances were “better at winning wars than keeping the peace” and argued that this form of alliance-building risked exacerbating tensions.

He said such alliances bind “entire regions to the war chariot of countries seeking hegemony” and “tend to exacerbate confrontation, and trigger, escalate, and expand conflicts, rather than the contrary”.

“Counting on military alliances to maintain peace is a poisoned chalice, about which we should not harbour any illusions,” he said.

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.