INTERNATIONAL SECURITY Does an increasingly powerful China present a dilemma for New Zealand?
New Zealand: Do we face a China dilemma? Former New Zealand Ambassador to China John McKinnon CNZM QSO and Beijing-based business leader David Mahon deliver sage perspectives at a recent public discussion, reports Nicholas Dynon.
John McKinnon CNZM QSO is a twotime New Zealand Ambassador to China, and a former Chief Executive of the Ministry of Defence.
David Mahon is the Executive Chairman of Beijing-based Mahon China Investment Management Limited 40
Against the background of a rising China, New Zealand’s relationship with the Middle Kingdom is often framed within media and politics in binary terms: trade versus security, friend versus foe, China versus the US. New Zealand’s choices over the future of this relationship thus tend to be talked about as a set of dilemmas. And these apparent dilemmas are by no means trifling. Amid the increasingly hyperbolic alarmism of political debate and the cacophonic crassness of click-bait journalism our China dilemmas are presented as urgent, stark and – ultimately – personal. But, does China indeed pose a dilemma to New Zealand, or – beyond the black-and-white presented to us by the pundits – does China pose something else entirely? A high stakes question John McKinnon, who served twice as New Zealand Ambassador to China (2001-04 and 2015-18) and is a former Secretary of Defence, sees no China dilemma for New Zealand but rather a challenge. “I think that challenge is significant and I think for the future of our country it’s important that we face up to it,” he told a New Zealand China Friendship Society public discussion audience in July, “and it’s important that we actually get it right.” “This is high stakes stuff. Getting it right is more than just important, I think it’s crucial for our national future” According to McKinnon, the challenge is that China is a country “with
whom we have to have a relationship” yet at the same time it’s a country “very different from New Zealand.” “There are always going to be issues which we have different views on and different perspectives on, and the… challenge is how do you manage a relationship while respecting those differences at the same time as you continue to place value in the things that both bind you together and create common interests.” David Mahon, who has lived in Beijing since 1984, is chairman of Mahon China Investments and a veteran advisor on China to business leaders, public servants, and politicians. He too rebukes the notion of a dilemma. “I would say that there is a dilemma and the dilemma is that we think we have a dilemma. We think we have to choose,” posited Mahon. “The trouble is that New Zealand believes it has to make a choice. We don’t have to make a choice.” Difficulties adjusting to new norm Although both McKinnon and Mahon both negate the idea of a China dilemma, they nevertheless share an understanding of the various factors that have given rise to it. Prominent amongst these is the West’s coming to terms with a China that within a mere five decades has transformed itself from the China with whom formal diplomatic relations were established in the 1970s. “China became a wealthy country and quite a powerful Line of Defence
