Chris Hipkins speaks to the media on his first day in China.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping this evening on the most important day of his week-long trade mission to China.
Hipkins will meet Xi on Tuesday about 8.40pm New Zealand time at the Great Hall of the People, a grand state building on the edge of Tiananmen Square.
The meeting comes amid reports of a hardening in the relationship between Wellington and Beijing, and coded warnings from Chinese state media to remember the value of the $20 billion of exports New Zealand sends to China each year and serve as an example to countries like Australia.
Speaking to media on Monday, Hipkins did not deny a word of a story published in The Australian that reported Foreign Minster Nanaia Mahuta endured a “dressing down” and an “epic haranguing” by her counterpart Qin Gan when she visited China earlier this year.
Hipkins said Mahuta briefed him on the meeting when she returned to Wellington. He used much softer and more diplomatic language to describe the meeting.
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta meets Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang in Beijing in March. Photo / AP
“We had a conversation when she arrived back in New Zealand about the nature of the conversation and as with many diplomatic relationships there were areas of agreement and then there are areas of disagreement,” Hipkins said.
When asked whether he was worried his own meeting with Xi would be similarly explosive, Hipkins said he thought the meeting would be “diplomatic”.
Before his meeting with Xi, he will meet Zhao Leji, the Chairman of the National People’s conference.
Hipkins’ trip to Beijing comes at a critically important time in New Zealand’s relationship with China. New Zealand’s traditional security partners like Australia and the United States are taking a more hawkish approach to the rising superpower; meanwhile, China is keen to boost and deepen trade ties, showing countries the economic rewards that await countries who decide not to follow the American line.
This will sound appealing to the Government, which is concerned about New Zealand’s near-record trade deficit - the difference between what New Zealand buys and sells overseas.
New Zealand’s Ambassador to China Grahame Morton told a pōwhiri welcoming Hipkins to Beijing that a visit by the Prime Minster helped to set the tone of the relationship between the two countries.
He said there was “absolutely nothing like an official visit in China to set the tone for the relationship”.
“Prime Minister contact in China is unique. It is unique considering the overall expectations, the tone and the engagement in a relationship,” Morton said.
The pōwhiri, held at New Zealand’s embassy in Beijing, was one of the best seen on a post-pandemic trade or diplomatic mission. The visiting delegation was accompanied by Te Kapa Haka o Te Whānau a Apanui, champions of the Te Matatini Kapa Haka festival.
Domestic concerns intruded on the trip on Monday morning after the Herald reported on the fact the delegation took a spare RNZAF plane, in case the first broke down.
The Act Party used that decision to hit out at the Government for not lifting Defence spending, saying the planes could have been replaced if the Government had been less thrifty.
The party’s Defence spokesman James McDowal said answers to written Parliamentary questions showed more than $30 million had been spent maintaining the Defence Force’s two Boeing aircraft since June 2022. Act thinks they should be replaced.
Hipkins said both of the RNZAF’s Boeing 757s come up for replacement before the end of the decade and noted the Government had replaced the ageing Airforce Orion and Hercules planes.
Hipkins said he had spoken to Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran, who is a member of the business delegation, about the options for new aircraft on the flight to China, although much of this conversation was in jest and did not extend to buying a new plane from the national carrier.
Hipkins appeared keen to bury geopolitical concerns under the trade focus of the trip and focus on trade.
He told the pōwhiri the message of the trip was “crystal clear”.
“The purpose of our visit is to send one crystal-clear message, and that is New Zealand is open for business and that we value our relationship with China,” he said.
But geopolitical concerns continued to bubble away in the background.
Chinese state media had been talking up the importance of the meeting, two prominent organisations comparing New Zealand’s dovish handling of China favourably with Australia’s more forceful approach.
“In the past, many may think that New Zealand, as a relatively small country, lacked diplomatic autonomy, but in fact it has more say in various aspects including economy and national defence, even more than its neighbouring country Australia,” Chen Hong, director of the New Zealand Studies Centre at East China Normal University, told the Global Times, a state tabloid.
Chen said: “Grasping a major chance as the world enters the post-pandemic era, New Zealand has been able to exclude all kinds of pressures and influences to strengthen its relationship with China, setting a good example for other US allies of balancing well between its own interests in cooperating with China and its relations with Western countries.”
Shen Shishun, an Asia-Pacific affairs expert at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times the visit showed the importance New Zealand attached to the relationship.
“Against the backdrop of growing protectionism and unilateralism, Hipkins’ first visit to China underscores the importance the New Zealand Government attaches to its major trading partner,” Shen said.
One area of particular focus will be services growth. While goods exports to China have held up since the pandemic, services exports - things like tourism and international education - remain well below pre-pandemic levels.
Chinese state media said increasing numbers of international students to New Zealand was likely on the table in terms of talks with China.
Chen told the Global Times Hipkins would want to “attract more Chinese students to New Zealand universities through this tour… as most universities in the country have high rankings in the world and are known for their multicultural environment”.
New Zealand currently has a gaping trade deficit. The current account deficit - the difference between what New Zealand buys and sells overseas - for the year ended March 31, 2023 was $33b (8.5 per cent of GDP).
New Zealand’s services exports to China are still well below pre-pandemic levels. Services exports for the March 2023 quarter were $560m, half the $1b in services exports in the March 2019 quarter.
