Former MP and alleged Chinese spy anointed mentee as successor

Thursday, 20 June 2024

A Stuff Circuit investigation reveals decades of foreign interference by China in New Zealand. Video credit: Stuff Circuit

A National MP was mentored and endorsed by a predecessor who departed politics under a cloud over his ties with the Chinese Communist Party.

First-term list MP Nancy Lu was sitting in an interview with Chinese-language media outlet Panda TV37 next to Dr Jian Yang in 2020 when the outgoing MP and alleged Chinese spy admitted he handpicked Lu to be his successor, saying he had “trained” her to stand for the party “for a long time” and kept it secret from his colleagues.

Lu told Stuff Circuit she could not control who would offer an endorsement and would “leave it to others to comment on their statements”.

Yang abruptly retired from politics in July 2020. The three-term list MP previously studied and taught future Chinese spies English at schools run by the Chinese military for them to monitor communications before he emigrated to New Zealand, but denied ever being a spy himself.

Nancy Lu is a first-term list MP for the National Party.

His departure was hastened by security agencies’ concerns about his relationship with the Chinese government, according to news website POLITIK in 2021.

A new Stuff Circuit documentary The Long Game explored Yang’s influential role within China’s united front operations in New Zealand to promote the Chinese Communist Party’s interests.

Wealthy businessman Zhang Yikun, a senior united front figure whose conviction for unlawful donations to National was quashed at the Court of Appeal last year, had expressed disappointment to the party over the fact that Yang was never made a government minister.

Retiring National MP Jian Yang, left, said in a 2020 interview with Panda TV37 he “trained” current list MP Nancy Lu, centre, to be a candidate.

Yang said in a statement to Stuff Circuit that “numerous members of the Chinese community” wanted him to be a minister, “just like other ethnic communities would like to see ministers of their own ethnic background”.

The National Party first unveiled Lu as a list-only candidate in the 2020 election, parachuting her in at 26th, which, while seen as a high placing at the time, did not see her elected to Parliament.

Jian Yang abruptly retired from politics in 2020, reportedly pushed out by the party leadership over his relationship with the Chinese government.

In 2023, she jumped six places, putting her higher than some sitting MPs, including current Cabinet minister Tama Potaka and Simon O’Connor, then one of New Zealand’s representatives on the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) and the target of a Chinese-backed cyberattack.

Lu, an Auckland-based chartered accountant, moved to New Zealand from China with her family in 1997, joining National in 2015. She was one of the first members of the Blue Dragons, a group of ethnic Chinese National Party supporters which Yang established in 2016. It has subsequently rebranded as the National Party Chinese Group.

Then party president Peter Goodfellow, who, with former leader Sir John Key, recruited Yang to stand for National in 2011, credited Lu’s high 2020 list ranking to her private sector experience and “great connections into the Chinese community”.

Yang said in the Panda TV37 interview the day after Lu’s unveiling that her professional background, political beliefs and communication skills showed why she was “well-suited” for the party. Had Yang not retired in 2020, his list ranking would have been just one above Lu’s: “In other words, Nancy has taken over from me.”

Lu’s father Peter, a former current affairs commentator for Panda TV37, said in 2020 it was “necessary” to impose a sweeping national security law in Hong Kong, which the city’s authorities used to crush the pro-democracy opposition.

Lu, speaking, is one of the first members of the Blue Dragons, a group of ethnic Chinese National Party supporters that Jian Yang founded in 2016. It has subsequently rebranded to the National Party Chinese Group.

Then and current Foreign Minister Winston Peters suspended New Zealand’s extradition treaty with Hong Kong, saying New Zealand no longer trusted the city’s criminal justice system was sufficiently independent from China.

A December 2016 profile of Lu by Haiwai Net, a website run by the overseas edition of Chinese state media People’s Daily, credited her father’s “profound role” for her familiarity with Chinese culture to politics and current affairs.

Peter Lu hit pause on commentating just weeks before his daughter was announced as a National party candidate at the 2020 election. He had since continued to commentate on New Zealand-China relations and other international affairs on Chinese state media and nationalist online news site Guancha.

“Like any parent, my father has been influential in my life but I am able to hold my own views,” Nancy Lu said. Peter Lu did not respond to Stuff Circuit’s calls and texts.

New Zealand’s current IPAC co-chairs Ingrid Leary and Joseph Mooney called for a select committee inquiry into foreign interference last week, in the wake of revelations in The Long Game.

The Post reported in June 2023 that Vicky Lu (陸欣讌), publisher of the People’s Daily Overseas Edition in New Zealand, donated a one-off sum of $18,750 to National in May 2022. The party’s leader Christopher Luxon later said the donation had no sway over the party’s policy on China.