Welcome shift in China talk

There was a feeling of significance in the fact that Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta chose to highlight the need for New Zealand to reduce its reliance on China for export income in a speech on Monday.

Not that she made the point aggressively, carefully emphasising the importance of respect and consistency in our relationship with our biggest trading partner. Nonetheless it was welcome to have her say ‘‘we know that we need to ensure businesses in New Zealand have greater resilience through theirmarket connections, their trade platform with countries beyond China’’.

If that was a signal to businesses here to look seriously at diversifying their overseas dealings, due to concerns about China’s parlous human rights record, it will have seemed too subtle for some. Especially following extensive coverage of the plight of China’s Uyghur Muslims.

Four weeks ago Mahuta and her Australian counterpart Marise Payne released a joint statement expressing ‘‘grave concerns about the growing number of credible reports of severe human rights abuses against ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang’’ and backing the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and Canada in sanctioning officials there.

But Mahuta did not give China a free ride, raising concerns about its so-called debt trap diplomacy in the cash-strapped Pacific.

Even laced with subtlety, the speech seemed to be a sharp shift from the decision by New Zealand late last month not to sign amultilateral statement expressing concern about aworld Health Organisation-china report on the origins of the coronavirus. The report followed a joint investigation.

Invited to sign the statement alongside 13 other countries – including the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, its partners in the Five Eyes alliance – New Zealand said it wanted its scientific experts to independently analyse the report before commenting. Which seems prudent, except that the statement was about the investigation’s process, including concerns thatwhoinvestigators had not had access to all the required data.

‘‘WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged some data was withheld fromwhoinvestigators who travelled to China to research the origins of the pandemic,’’ ABC News reported on April 1, in a story about the NZ response.

Although the NZ foreign ministry at the time said ‘‘New Zealand’s decision not to join any statement was made independently’’, that did not stop suggestions it had been trying to avoid upsetting China. An official NZ comment on the report is still awaited.

An element of the NZ explanation suggested it wanted its response perceived as that of a small country standing up for itself. But instead of being seen as courageous, it drew an accusation of ‘‘timidity, even appeasement’’ from University of Canterbury academic Anne-marie Brady.

Mahuta’s comments on Monday may well have been partly calculated to win favour across the ditch, with Payne leading a trans-tasman delegation to NZ today. Mahuta’s statement on Monday about the visit described Australia as ‘‘New Zealand’s closest and most important international partner’’. It is, though relations are strained on several fronts.

Australia, however, has been stronger in its approach to China in recent months, and it will be interesting to see if Mahuta emerges from the talks with Payne emboldened to throw off any perception of timidity towards China.

Even laced with subtlety this speech seemed to be a sharp shift . . .