How Kiwis learned to stop worrying and love China
Monday, 29 June 2026
ANALYSIS: “There are now more New Zealanders with warm feelings, positive perceptions towards China, than towards the United States. Exactly the same is true in Australia.”
Australian James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, outlined the Australasian shift in love for the world’s two sparring superpowers at the China Business Summit in 2026 last week.
The theme of the conference, attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Trade Minister Todd McClay, NZ First deputy leader Shane Jones, and Tourism Minister Louise Upston, was “Navigating the crisis”.
That was the crisis of US President Donald Trump’s “America First” bullying of allies, riding roughshod over trade agreements, and his attempts to contain China.
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But in the course of a single year, polling by the Asia New Zealand Foundation recorded that the proportion of New Zealanders who saw China as a friend rose from 38% to 43%, while the proportion who saw the US as a friend dropped from 61% to 39%.
And the proportion of New Zealanders who saw China as a threat dropped from 28% to 23%, while the proportion who saw the US as a threat rose from 17% to 32%.
“It is impossible for New Zealand or Australia, to go all in on a US led coalition targeting China, when its democratic system has twice elected a president like Donald Trump, who seems much more interested in coercing allies and partners than in confronting rivals,” Laurenceson said.
Both Australia and New Zealand also know where their economic interests lay.
China NZ’s biggest trading partner
Australia had no interest in seeing China’s economic rise stall, Laurenceson said.
China is New Zealand’s largest trading partner, and has been for the last 13 years, and Luxon told the conference about his desire to see that trade grow, including New Zealand attracting Chinese capital, and adopting Chinese technology, to drive our productivity, and economic growth.
Laurenceson said China was now the world’s largest economy, and it continued to grow fast. It matched the US on almost every military front, and had more money to spend than any US/Western coalition would be able to muster.
“China is doing all this, hardly breaking a sweat. Even independent sources estimate that China is spending no more than 2% of GDP on defence. In the Cold War, the Soviet Union never reached more than 60% of US GDP. That meant it had to spend upwards of 10% of GDP on defence to try and reach military parity with that of the United States,” Laurenceson said.
It all argued that US attempts to deter and limit Chinese power would drift into coming to a “strategic accommodation” with it, though there could be an extended period in which New Zealand and Australia, and its businesses, would have to operate in a world of ambiguity and disorder.
“The challenge for New Zealand is to build strategies robust enough to survive ongoing strategic competition, but flexible enough to thrive if it gives way to something else,” he said.
Luxon: US tariff’s ‘insane’, China dependable
Luxon has similar expectations, and he gave voice to some of the drivers behind New Zealanders’ sentiment shift - though he stressed the relationship with both superpowers was “consequential” for New Zealand.
“We are certainly in a much more contested, fragmented, and volatile world. That’s not an abstract concept. It’s something that you are encountering every day,” he said.
Trade was being used as a “tool of leverage”, he said, going on to describe Trump’s tariffs as “insane”, saying: “We think that movie doesn’t end well.”
By contrast, he praised China, which New Zealand was the first country in the world to sign a free trade deal with in 2008, for how consistent it had been in its relationship with New Zealand.
“We will cooperate and maximise corporation wherever we can, and where our interests align. We will disagree where we must, and we will communicate and manage those differences in a predictable and consistent way. And that approach hasn’t changed between our two countries. It’s understood as the operating framework for how we manage this relationship, and how we deepen this relationship,” Luxon said.
He spoke of the “shift from rules to power”, but it was clear he was speaking about the US’ actions, not China’s.
Most world trade is still governed by World Trade Organisation rules that small countries rely on. That included New Zealand’s trade with China, which has passed $23 billion in exports from New Zealand, and more than $40b in two-way trade.
And New Zealand trade with China kept growing.
“China is no longer just a commodity story,” Luxon said. “We’re seeing a very important shift, the next case of the China story, without doubt, is premiumisation, its branding and innovation.”
Tourism Minister Louise Upston celebrated the success in wooing back Chinese tourists after Covid, and hoped that by the end of the year, Chinese visitation would get back to its pre-pandemic levels.
Chinese ambassador Wang Xiaolong, a small man who speaks softly with the force of 1.4 billion people behind him, told the conference that New Zealand and China’s economies were highly complimentary.
China’s policy orientation, both domestic and foreign, remained consistent, he said.
“We are firmly committed to developing our economy and improving our people’s livelihood and a historical endeavour for national rejuvenation,” he said.
Under its 15th five-year plan, the Chinese economy would sustain steady growth, albeit with “shifting engines and improving quality”.
More Chinese robots being born than babies
China is birthing the future world through its technological prowess, the conference heard. That included its greentech (solar and EV cars, included), its robotics, and its AI.
China now holds approximately 60% of the world’s AI patents, Xiaolong said.
“China’s development represents an opportunity for New Zealand, not a threat. Our economies are highly complementary, and there’s every reason for us to play a greater role in supporting each other’s efforts to achieve our respective development goals,” he said.
Luxon, and opposition MP Damien O’Connor both saw Chinese technology as a way of lifting New Zealand productivity, and economic growth.
ANZ economist Raymond Yeung said China was birthing three robots for every human baby. Economic growth was coming joblessly. There was a fall in new jobs being created for humans. Ageing populations all around the world were seeing the future in China.
O’Connor was keen to see robots displace mundane, low-productivity jobs, and allow people to move into decent paid wages, so they could afford to live and have a good lifestyle.
Poking the panda
The China-New Zealand relationship appears capable of coping with differences, though China did send a message with a travel ban on four New Zealand MPs who visited Taiwan in June.
But there are also sensitivities on a personal level that businesspeople report back from their visits to the country as they seek to build relationships.
Auckland mayor Wayne Brown, who is a fan of the high regard in which city mayors are held in the country and of China’s technological prowess, voiced concern at the summit over some of the rhetoric in New Zealand.
“I’m worried that the minor parties are getting more and more mad than what they’re offering, and some of what they’re talking about,” Brown said.
“This is not helping our foreign relationships. People in India and China hear some of that hare-brained stuff.”
He said: “They’re actually annoying our overseas business partners. You can’t afford to have that.”
There are conditions on the China New Zealand relationship.
As he has at previous summits, Xiaolong said China would firmly defend its core interests, sovereignty, dignity, and territorial integrity.
“There’s only one China in the world, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory,” he said. “The Chinese mainland will continue to make our utmost effort in pursuing peaceful unification. At the same time, we will not renounce any option that may be necessary to deter separatist forces, and forestall any external interference.”
But while previous summits have seen business people voice concern over New Zealand’s ability to remain friends with both the US and China, there was optimism that the country was now more capable of managing that tightrope walk.
Alistair Crozier, executive director of the New Zealand China Council, said in recent years it felt like New Zealand was at a constant risk of tripping one way or the other, and that “one small step, and we could fall to our doom”.
But, Crozier told the summit: “I don’t get the feeling that that’s the case any more. We’re far more used to coping with very fast evolving regional and geopolitical situations.”