Beware of becoming too close to China

In a recent Herald article, former Foreign Minister Sir Don McKinnon claimed: “New Zealand has learned to build a relationship [with China] on the basis of mutual respect, despite obvious differences in core values”. McKinnon’s claim is controversial.

Is it indeed possible to respect a person or a regime when one doesn’t share its core values? For example, a core value of mine is free speech. So I may lack respect for someone fundamentally against freedom of speech. Should things be different at a nation-state level?

McKinnon seems reluctant to spell out his “obvious differences in core values”. What are they? New Zealanders need to be clear about these to understand who and what we are engaging with.

The People’s Republic of China is an authoritarian inheritor of Mao’s totalitarian regime of the past century. Recently, under Xi Jinping, it has been moving in more authoritarian directions, showing little respect for free speech, a free press, freedom of association, religious and academic freedom, a free judiciary and other universal human rights that New Zealanders value highly. It is also deeply corrupt. In 1989 the regime crushed protesting students with tanks.

It may be, as Foreign Minister Winston Peters recently suggested, that despite these differences in values, we should respect China because the regime has succeeded economically for the Chinese people. Economist Michael Reddell has shown China’s economic performance has been unspectacular compared with similar Asian countries that have political systems far more in sync with our own. So, focusing simply on the economic side, there’s still little to respect.

McKinnon claims “continuing expansion” of our relationship with China is “overwhelmingly” in our interests. Others may draw more cautious conclusions. The more we are entwined with a corrupt authoritarian state which will not hesitate to employ our growing economic dependence against us, the more vulnerable we become to (1) importing their corruption, and (2) to trade being used as an economic weapon. Chinese economic power has already been wielded on another small state, Norway, when it gave a Nobel prize to human rights campaigner Liu Xiaobo.

Growing dependence on China is thus not “overwhelmingly” in New Zealand’s interests. But growing dependence is what China is seeking. At least that’s according to academic Anne-Marie Brady. Perhaps, rather than placing all our eggs in the China basket, we need to put more energy into developing other trading partners.

McKinnon sees China as simply using “soft power”, the polar opposite of hard military power, to project influence. Soft power is the ability to shape other nations’ views through appeal and attraction. However, for reasons discussed above, China is not generally appealing and attractive to New Zealanders.

Also, recent China-linked activities in New Zealand are not particularly “soft”. For example, people close to the Chinese Communist Party have avoided the Electoral Finance Act to make significant party-political donations in a nontransparent fashion. People with close and uncritical links to the Communist Party sit in positions of responsibility on both sides of our House of Representatives. China seems determined to control the Chinese-language media in New Zealand.

McKinnon believes the exercise of Chinese “soft power” in New Zealand is not troublesome as even we do the same thing. I think this is false equivalence. Do people with close connections to the New Zealand state funnel considerable funds into the Chinese political system for nontransparent motives? Do we have New Zealand-born and raised people with strong links to our major parties in strategic positions of political power in China? Do we attempt to control the English-language press in China?

Maybe if the answer to these three questions were yes, New Zealand’s behaviour might be considered comparable, and Chinese behaviour within the realm of acceptability.

I recently attended an international symposium, partly organised by the Confucius Institute (which is half funded by China) of Victoria University on “New Zealand’s Relationship with China. Past, Present and Future”. The programme cover included a prominent picture of Mao Zedong. No attendees seemed to think twice about this disturbing image.

As we trip over ourselves chasing trade dollars, we seem in some danger of losing our moral compass.