Awarning about China, the ‘fragile superpower’
A China advocate turned sceptic says New Zealand should be wary of China’s intentions in its neighbourhood but believes it is not as strong a superpower as it might appear.
Jeremy Goldkorn said he also cannot see a scenario where China does not make a play to take back Taiwan under current leader Xi Jinping. ‘‘He has built himself up as one of the greatest leaders since Chairman Mao.
‘‘But he didn’t bring Hong Kong back, he didn’t start the economic reforms that have led to this prosperous China, he didn’t liberate China from the Western imperialist powers,’’ Goldkorn said.
‘‘The one thing he can do is reunify China.’’
Goldkorn spent 20 years in China and edits prominent New York-based website SupChina that deals with China-related issues.
He spoke to media in Auckland as part of a NZ China Council effort to present different perspectives on China.
‘‘I’m very, very wary of China right now. I think it is a country that one has to treat gingerly but I also think New Zealand can’t really get away from China.’’
However, Goldkorn said, ‘‘bombast’’ was not the way to go when it came to negotiating with China, because the country would not hesitate to ‘‘whack a small country over the head’’ if it displeased it.
When it comes to relations between New Zealand and China, the public conversation is often pitched as a trade-off between a $37.7 billion trading relationship and taking a stand on international security and human rights issues.
Unlike many other large markets like the United States, the European Union and India, China has no strong domestic agricultural lobby, which has made it easier for New Zealand to secure generous market access there.
New Zealand’s exports to China have more than doubled in 10 years, much higher than the rate at which our exports have grown overall (24%).
But as this relationship has grown so have calls for New Zealand to reconsider important aspects of its relationship with China. Covid-19-induced trade disruptions have shown up how vulnerable supply chains are to disruptions in China and the repression of Uyghers in Xinjiang has proven difficult to square with New Zealand’s stance on human rights. Then there has been the clampdown in Hong Kong and concerns over China’s deepening reach into the Pacific.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson told a business audience in 2020 that he believed some industries had grown too reliant on trade with China, other politicians have also issued similar warnings.
However, there is also a debate about whether New Zealand’s level of exports to China actually leaves us economically vulnerable.
A Sense Partners report for the NZ-China Council released earlier this year argued New Zealand was only vulnerable to China across a limited range of exports and many exports could be redirected to other markets if access to China was suddenly cut off.
As for China’s ability to project power beyond its borders, Goldkorn borrowed former deputy US secretary of state Susan Shirk’s term ‘‘fragile superpower’’ to describe the reality when it came to the country’s hard and soft power assets.
China was investing heavily in advanced military technology and its hard power was largely focused on being able to intimidate small countries, or win a land war with India. However, Goldkorn argued the country had big weaknesses within its military
China’s military was large but not well experienced and it had three aircraft carriers, compared with the United States’ 11.
But Goldkorn said China was also bad at soft power and he pointed to the closure of the Confucius Institutes in the US as evidence of that. He argued the closures had achieved little because the institutes were not particularly good at drumming up support for China in the first place.
‘‘Quite frankly China is so very bad at soft power that there is not much of a worry that it is going to somehow brainwash Kiwi students.’’