New Zealand’s prominence on the global stage in recent years was defined by young, progressive Labour Party Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern—at least until her shock resignation in January, when she announced that she was exhausted by five years of dealing with domestic crises. Her empathy in handling the 2019 Christchurch terror attacks and her initial success keeping COVID-19 at bay made her a beacon of hope for the global left during the era of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
But Ardern was more conservative than progressives assumed, especially when it came to the strategic competition between China and the U.S.-led club known as the Five Eyes, a group of countries that have shared intelligence since World War II, which comprises Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. By the same token, conservatives globally who expect a more hawkish New Zealand after Labour’s defeat in elections this month will be disappointed.
The conservative National Party, which is leading the country’s new right-leaning coalition, is distinctly out of step with other conservative politicians in Five Eyes because of its pro-China approach. The party’s foreign affairs spokesman, Gerry Brownlee, argued during the election campaign that New Zealand should protect trade with China, rather than contest its human rights record or military expansion in the South China Sea. Party leader Christopher Luxon even said on the campaign trail that he would “absolutely” welcome Belt and Road investment by China in New Zealand.
The National Party and its smaller, libertarian partner party, ACT, won an overwhelming victory in the Oct. 14 elections, overwhelming Labour and its allied Green and Maori parties. The Winston Peters-led New Zealand First Party holds the balance of power with eight seats, but the makeup of the government won’t be known until after the declaration of the final result on Nov. 3, once special votes are counted.
Unlike the Liberal-National coalition in Australia, Republicans in the United States, Britain’s Conservatives, and Canada’s Conservatives, the National Party has downplayed concerns about election interference by China and been reluctant to join the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, and United States) defense arrangements being created to contain it.
New Zealand’s partners in Five Eyes will be watching to see who Luxon appoints as foreign minister. There are two clear paths forward. The possible reappointment of two-time Foreign Minister Peters may calm the nerves of New Zealand’s allies. However, the appointment of Brownlee would turn New Zealand in an even more pro-China direction, given Brownlee’s extraordinary support of China’s approach in Xinjiang and his party leader Luxon’s reluctance to embrace AUKUS.
When the National Party was last in power from 2008 to 2017, the joke among diplomats in Canberra and London was that New Zealand’s membership of Five Eyes made the alliance more like “four eyes and a wink.” (The joke was that New Zealand was not as staunch as the others in its threat-monitoring.) Then-National Prime Minister John Key championed New Zealand’s burgeoning trade links with China, an effort that was driven by the two countries’ 2008 free trade deal, which was the first that Beijing signed with a Western power after joining the World Trade Organization.
Key met regularly with Chinese President Xi Jinping and signed New Zealand up for China’s Belt and Road Initiative, albeit only in a preliminary form. Now a company director, Key remains active in National Party politics and continues to meet Xi privately. Key has repeatedly backed China in recent years, and Luxon, who now leads the party with the most parliamentary seats, is his protégé.
A former CEO of Air New Zealand and a longtime sales and marketing executive at Unilever, Luxon has said that New Zealand’s adoption of the so-called Pillar Two arrangements for defence technology-sharing under AUKUS—which would give New Zealand access to advanced capabilities in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and hypersonics—was not assured.
Ardern was similarly circumspect about throwing New Zealand’s lot in with the Trump-led push against China when she was elected in 2017, citing China’s status as New Zealand’s largest trading partner for more than a decade. Also relevant was that Ardern’s mentor, former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark, had negotiated the 2008 free trade deal.
Ardern’s approach became more robust as New Zealand’s security services zeroed in on evidence of Chinese interference in local politics and as New Zealand’s defense strategy pivoted toward seeing China as a threat, rather than a partner. Ardern’s first foreign minister was Winston Peters, who engineered New Zealand’s “Pacific Reset” in 2018. That effort ramped up spending in the region and was seen as an effort to push back at China’s checkbook diplomacy.
Ardern’s appointment of Nanaia Mahuta as foreign minister in late 2020 after Peters exited Parliament also demonstrated a more combative stance on China. Mahuta, a senior Maori leader, adopted a tougher approach on China’s activities in Xinjiang and added New Zealand’s name to various joint Five Eyes statements that were critical of China. In March this year, Mahuta was reportedly given an hourlong “dressing down” during a private meeting with then-Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang in Beijing. Mahuta had criticized China repeatedly in previous months and said of her meeting with Qin, “I noted New Zealand’s deep concerns regarding the human rights situation in Xinjiang and the erosion of rights and freedoms in Hong Kong.”
Later, in June, Mahuta expanded on her tougher stance regarding China and what happened during the meeting with Qin. “We certainly made very clear the issues that were of most concern to New Zealand,” she said. “I’ve discussed that in the public domain: We’ve discussed Russia and Ukraine, discussed South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, a number of issues in terms of the matters that I’ve consistently reflected in the New Zealand context.”
Labour became more assertive toward China under Ardern and Mahuta’s steerage. When the government made a notable decision to block Huawei from building 5G networks in the country in 2018, the National Party seemed increasingly uncomfortable. In particular, Brownlee—first in line to be named foreign minister—has been explicitly pro-Beijing in his comments. Brownlee said before the election that U.S. and Australian objections to China’s growing presence in the Pacific were hypocritical, given that Beijing was offering small island nations more immediate and concrete assistance.
Earlier this month, Brownlee said that under a National Party government, there would be a renewed focus on trade with China. “Over the last 15 years, they’ve become substantially our major trading partners. So we’re not in a position, economically, to put it at risk,” he said. Of Taiwan and China’s plans for it, he said, “I’m very skeptical about the hand-wringing, alarm-bell-ringing stuff that has no particular action attached to it to try to defeat some of the worst predictions that people ought to make.”
Brownlee even defended China’s activities in its Xinjiang province after last year’s critical United Nations report on China’s oppression of the Uyghur minority. Of the report, Brownlee said, “[m]ost poignant for me is that it has recognised that some of the activities the Chinese government [has undertaken] have been about preventing terrorist activity in Xinjiang.” The intention behind the Chinese government’s actions in this regard to combat terrorism, Brownlee said, “are not significantly different to those of our own New Zealand legislation.”
New Zealand’s views on China have always been more moderate than those of its neighbor Australia, given that it is smaller and more vulnerable to being cut off by China. New Zealand’s dairy and meat exports to China are could be substituted with imports from other countries, while Australia’s iron ore exports to China are much more difficult to replace.
But doubts about the National Party’s coziness with China, in particular, have grown more acute since revelations emerged about former National Parliament member Jian Yang. He was a member from 2011 to 2020 and had served on the select committee for foreign affairs, defense, and trade. A joint investigation in 2017 by local news outlet Newsroom and the Financial Times alleging that the Chinese-born MP spent 15 years working for Chinese military intelligence before migrating to New Zealand. He only exited Parliament in 2020 after an inconclusive investigation by security services, and after he had arranged a meeting in Beijing between Brownlee; then-National Party opposition-leader Simon Bridges; and Guo Shengkun, the leader of China’s state security apparatus. Yang did not inform or involve New Zealand foreign affairs officials in the meeting planning. (After refusing interviews with investigative journalists in 2020, Yang retired just before that year’s election. He has denied any wrongdoing.)
The National Party has never reviewed its vetting of Yang, or donations to the party by Chinese Communist Party-linked donors in the local Chinese community. That’s despite New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service accusing China’s intelligence agencies of political interference in New Zealand in an official report this August.
National may yet choose to appoint Peters as foreign minister as part of a government-forming deal rather than Brownlee, who is also seen as a candidate for the parliamentary speaker. It’s clear who U.S. and Australian officials would prefer in the race to shape New Zealand’s new foreign policy.