By Liz Lee and Lucy Craymer
BEIJING/WELLINGTON (Reuters) -New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon will visit China from Tuesday, looking to foster trade ties and woo tourists and students, although thorny issues of security and defence will figure on his agenda in meetings with top leaders.
Making his first visit to China since becoming prime minister in November 2023, Luxon will arrive in the financial hub of Shanghai before heading to Beijing for meetings on Friday with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang, his office said.
“It’s all part of our plan to grow our economy – creating more jobs, lifting wages, and putting more money in your back pocket,” Luxon said in an Instagram post as he set off.
The visit comes as Beijing’s growing influence in the Pacific during the last few years has alarmed many Western nations whose traditionally stronger security foothold there is being challenged.
“There are a whole bunch of issues and challenges in the relationship,” said Jason Young, director of the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre at Victoria University, while adding that both sides agree they have significant interests.
New Zealand aired concerns in February, for instance, when the Cook Islands, within its constitutional ambit, signed pacts, such as one on co-operation on the economy, infrastructure and seabed mining, with China, without consulting it first.
The presence of a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy task force in the Tasman Sea and Chinese activity in the Pacific also pose challenges for the relationship, Young added.
SIGNIFICANT INTERESTS
Trade and travel have proved less fractious areas for the two countries, however.
The first developed nation to sign a free trade deal with Beijing in 2008, New Zealand counts dairy, meat and wood products as its largest items of export to China. Tourism and education are major services sectors.
The Pacific country’s exports to China in 2024 stood at NZ$20.85 billion ($12.64 billion), made up of NZ$17.75 billion in goods and NZ$3.1 billion in services, the foreign ministry says on its website.
Chinese tourists are the third-largest group of international visitors to New Zealand, though their numbers are still nearly a fifth lower than in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, official data shows.
On the weekend, New Zealand said it would start in November a 12-month trial of visa waivers for Chinese passport holders arriving from Australia with visas valid for its neighbour, reciprocating China’s visa-free policy for New Zealanders last year.
Luxon, who has called China “a vital part” of his Pacific nation’s economic story, has told domestic media that based on the “mature relationship” with Beijing, he expects talks during his four-day visit to cover topics of security and defence.
“The challenging global outlook makes it vital that we are sharing perspectives and engaging China on issues that matter to New Zealand,” his office said in a statement last week.
The leaders of the two countries previously met on the sidelines of November’s APEC summit in Peru, while Li visited New Zealand in June last year.
Wellington has historically taken a more conciliatory approach towards China than Australia or its other partners in the Five Eyes security arrangement.
But in recent years it has beome more vocal on issues such as human rights, the international rules-based order and potential militarisation of the Pacific.
In June 2023, then Prime Minister Chris Hipkins visited Beijing, prior to Luxon.
($1=NZ$1.6491)
(Reporting by Liz Lee in Beijing and Lucy Craymer in Wellington; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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