Watch: Chinese Premier avoids Stuff’s questions on foreign interference
Friday, 14 June 2024
Chinese Premier refused to answer Stuff’s questions about China’s foreign interference, during a visit to Plant and Food Research in Auckland today.
MPs are calling for a select committee inquiry into foreign interference, following revelations in the Stuff Circuit documentary The Long Game, of Chinese Communist Party operations in New Zealand.
Premier Li is on day two of a three day visit here.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang avoided questions about China’s foreign interference in New Zealand, while attending a media event in Auckland on Friday.
Premier Li was visiting Plant and Food Research and while the media was advised it was a photo and video opportunity, journalists were told not to ask questions.
However, in the wake of revelations in the Stuff Circuit documentary The Long Game, Stuff sought to ask Premier Li of the Chinese government justifies decades of foreign interference in New Zealand.
Premier Li did not answer and was bundled out of the building by officials.
His silence comes as MPs call for a select committee inquiry into foreign interference, in the wake of the revelations in The Long Game including a kidnapping and attempted kidnapping on New Zealanld soil.
Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China co-chairs Ingrid Leary and Joseph Mooney penned a letter to foreign affairs and trade select committee chair, Tim van de Molen, on Friday outlining their concerns, saying they have “good reason to understand” there are more examples yet to be uncovered.
The call comes on day two of Li ‘s three day visit to New Zealand. He was welcomed in Wellington on Thursday.
“The Committee will be aware of the recent reports from the likes of Stuff, where serious allegations of kidnap, assault, and harassment were raised. There has been the widely reported hacking of Parliament’s own computer systems and prior to that, several MPs and an academic also targeted,” they wrote.
“As co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China we take a particular interest in foreign interference and not solely from China. Our membership, both here in New Zealand and around the globe, are concerned about the growing list of interference examples in various countries from a number of state-sponsored actors.”
They also pointed out an increasing level of foreign interference in overseas democracies, especially Russian and North Korean activities in the United States and the United Kingdom.
“We feel a particular responsibility for our Pacific neighbours as well.”
The group in May also revealed prominent academic Anne-Marie Brady and two MPs are were individually targeted by hackers in a China-backed attack in 2021.
Former Labour MP Louisa Wall and former National MP Simon O’Connor – who were both New Zealand’s representatives on IPAC - were targeted.
Brady, who is a professor of political science, expressed outrage at the time that the government never warned her that she had been targeted.
Parliament held a controversial inquiry into foreign interference after the 2016-2017 general election. It released its report in 2019, and in 2020 passed new legislation to restrict foreign political donations. However it did not name China as an aggressor.
However, in August 2023, when the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) published its first security threat environment report, it too went further than ever before, naming three countries it accused of conducting foreign interference in New Zealand: China, Russia, and Iran.
In March New Zealand’s intelligence service publicly accused China of acting against New Zealand’s interests for launching a cyber attack affecting the parliamentary counsel office and parliamentary service.
SIS Director-General Andrew Hampton told Stuff Circuit the “most persistent foreign interference activities in Aotearoa New Zealand [are] carried out by the People’s Republic of China”.
The agency, in a media briefing, also called for greater awareness about the threat of foreign spying and interference.