NZ intelligence report accuses China of foreign interference

NEW Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service (NZIS) said China is the main exponent of foreign interference in the South Pacific nation.

Publishing its analysis of New Zealand’s security threat environment for the first time Friday in Wellington, the NZSIS said there are a small number of states who attempt foreign interference but their ability to cause harm is significant.

Most notable is the continued targeting of ethnic Chinese communities in New Zealand by groups and individuals linked to the People’s Republic of China, it said in the report.

“NZSIS is aware of ongoing activity in and against New Zealand and our home region that is linked to the PRC’s intelligence services,” it said. “This is a complex intelligence concern for New Zealand.”

Taiwan’s exports tumbled for 11 straight months.

New Zealand is wary of offending China, its largest trading partner, but it is also concerned about Beijing’s ambitions in the Pacific. The government last week announced that it will invest in the defense force and protect its interests in the Pacific as China seeks more influence in region.

The NZSIS said New Zealand’s geographic position in the Indo-Pacific and its links with other Pacific countries “will draw the attention of foreign intelligence services who want to inform foreign governments on New Zealand’s government policy and strategy in the region.”

The NZSIS said only a few states undertake espionage or interference activities against New Zealand, but “some do so persistently and with the potential to cause significant harm to our governance structures, democracy, and social cohesion.” Bloomberg News particularly exposed, with consumer confidence at depressed levels and a propertymarket slump hampering a rebound from last year’s pandemic lockdowns.

Germany’s export weakness has seen its industrial production languish at a six-month low, making its emergence from a recession earlier this year all the tougher.

Goods cycle

THE risk is that European and Chinese weakness “could spread to the US and the rest of the world,” Lupton and Kasman wrote. In time, the duo anticipates a “turn back up in the goods-production cycle.”

But for now, there’s a welter of ugly data.

India’s merchandise exports plunged 22 percent in June from a year earlier.

Vietnam is mired in the longest slump for shipments abroad in 14 years.

Canada’s merchandise-trade balance recorded its second consecutive monthly deficit in June on falling exports.

What’s also evident in the latest figures is some reshaping in global trade flows, amid a push by Western nations led by US President Joe Biden to reduce reliance on China and Russia.

Mexico has recaptured its top spot as the No. 1 exporter to the US, pushing China to third, after Canada. And China’s data show shipments to the US plummeted 23.1 percent in July. Exports to markets including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the European Union and Australia all dropped by double-digit percentages. But its shipments to Russia surged 73 percent this year.

China’s share of Germany’s total exports dropped to 6 percent in the first half of this year from 8 percent in 2020, according to the Kiel Trade Indicator gauge.

One of the world’s largest shippers, A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, said last week that global container trade will probably contract as much as 4 percent this year—even worse than a previous prediction of a 2.5 percent contraction.

“There’s a lot of moving parts right now, from rate hikes and the risk of recession,” as well as “uncertainty also about GDP growth in China and what demand is going to be in China next year,” Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc said on Bloomberg Television on August 4. Maitreyi Das, an economist at HSBC Holdings Plc, one of the world’s leading banks for trade financing, said that “higher interest rates and resilient inflation has impacted real income, especially in developed markets,” diminishing demand for goods. Bloomberg News