Little time for beef in this display of harmony
Well, that seemed to go well enough. And the timing of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s three-day visit to New Zealand could hardly have been better.
With United States President Donald Trump taking the protectionist route, and China claiming the free trade high ground, he and English had much to agree on – and the usual questions did not get a lot of currency; the ones about New Zealand doing the diplomatic splits between historical and military ties with the US and the growing importance of trade with China.
English has received an official invitation for a return visit, likely to be next year. And you would have to think he will find that a much more welcome prospect than the normally sought-after gold-standard invitation, the one to the White House.
It probably came as a relief that in official talks Li did not raise the vexed issue of New Zealand’s inquiry into Chinese steel dumping. Officials would certainly have been briefed in advance, in light of barely veiled back-channel threats of trade retaliation last year if the investigation went ahead.
English had his lines ready when asked by the media – that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment probe is at arm’s length from the Government and will be allowed to run to its natural conclusion.
But there was no doubting Li had a strong view on the matter when asked about it in the only question allowed to New Zealand media.
His first stab at it may have been based on a mistranslation, because his answer seemed to focus on waste.
But after a note from an official he returned to the question at the end of the joint press conference and gave a long – his longest – answer.
In it he canvassed the small amount of Chinese production that was exported (10 per cent), the efforts China had gone to close down some production in the face of a worldwide over-supply and the small proportion of New Zealand’s imports that came from China (only 5 per cent).
But he didn’t stop there, pointing to New Zealand’s 50 per cent share of dairy imports into China – and they didn’t accuse us of dumping milk in their market – as well as the trade imbalance between the two nations.
It could be read as a veiled threat, if you were inclined, especially in light of the links made last year between the steel issue and possible retaliation against dairy and other goods.
But English chose to shrug it off as a sign of the ‘‘robustness of the relationship’’.
‘‘These are issues that get talked about in pretty testing ways, and that’s how it should be,’’ he said.
Instead the focus was on the positive.
China’s offer looks a lot tastier than any NZ-US free trade deal on the menu.
We got a firm date to start talks on the all-important free trade upgrade, and in return made the right noises about China’s mega-vision of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road known as One Belt, One Road.
Launched in late 2013 it brings together plans for trade and infrastructure development, drawing on the ancient Silk Road linking China with the countries to the West across to Europe, alongside a new maritime equivalent running through the South China Sea and across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
New Zealand will generally support the concept, and send junior minister Paul Goldsmith to China’s summit in May, but it would be well wide of the mark to suggest some Chinese contracted infrastructure projects here are an integral part of the plan.
Try as you might, it’s hard to imagine a highway between Whangarei and the Marsden Point refinery as a notch in the One Belt or a slip road onto the Silk Route. But there is clearly huge potential for Chinese investment here, albeit in the face of public scepticism about how much will end up in the wallets of New Zealand businesses and workers.
Beef was also on the menu in more ways than one.
A valuable six-month trial of chilled meat exports – after Australia made progress on the same issue – has been welcomed, but Li was apparently less enthusiastic about the single-minded menu served to him at official functions, in Australia and then here. Beef, beef, beef and beef. At the final meal (beef again) Li had his wish for a change answered and he was served chicken.
Li, an economist known as the ‘‘cautious enforcer’’ among the Chinese leadership, also received the obligatory All Black jersey (No 10 on the back for the play-maker after his boss Xi Jinping got the lucky No 8) which was well received. And he emoted-up when a group of students broke into a waiata in mandarin during the gala lunch in Auckland.
They would all have contributed to the ‘‘relationship’’ that foreign affairs officials see as so important, especially at a leader-to-leader level, in furthering New Zealand’s interests.
Part of that was a private dinner with Li, his wife Cheng Hong, who is a professor of English, PM English, his wife Mary and two of their boys.
The first test of how much beef there is in the ‘‘relationship’’ will come at the FTA upgrade talks starting in late April.
In Li’s oft-repeated words, it will move the free trade deal to the most advanced level of any with a developed nation.
And right now that’s a lot tastier than any NZ-US free trade deal on the menu.