Warning shots: Why China’s rhetoric against NZ is getting more aggressive

Wednesday, 15 July 2026

ANALYSIS: At first glance, the Chinese ambassador’s stinging rebuke of New Zealand appears to have nothing to do with the moves the country is making towards joining a new defence pact with Fiji and Australia.

The statement on Monday was focused entirely on the South China Sea.

New Zealand had signed a statement commemorating ten years since an arbitration ruling on the matter that China has never recognised.

The ruling from the Hague was made under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and ruled that China did not have exclusive control over the area, rejecting the “nine-dash line” on maps China has been pushing which takes in contested but largely uninhabited islands far closer to other South East Asian nations than mainland China.

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China has ignored the ruling and has continued to reclaim land on these archipelagos which it then uses for new military bases. New Zealand has commemorated the ruling many times before - but not earned anything like the pushback it did on Monday night.

Ambassador Wang Xiaolong said in the statement that China had “no interest” in damaging New Zealand but it took “two to tango”.

“We are deeply disappointed at and firmly oppose New Zealand having joined in the statement, which clearly deviates from the understanding reached by our leaders and seriously undermines the foundation of healthy and stable relationship,“ Wang said.

“We urge the New Zealand side to cease immediately violating China’s interests and return to the path of promoting the development of the bilateral relationship on the basis of mutual respect and mutual benefit, and resolving disputes through constructive dialogues, with a view to avoiding further damage to the relationship.”

This is quite a bit stronger than what former ambassador Wang Lutong said in 2016 when New Zealand first recognised the decision, with then-Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee urging China to respect it.

The then-Chinese ambassador was resolute in condemning the Hague’s decision but essentially brushed off New Zealand’s support for it, telling The Nation’s Lisa Owen “the South China Sea is not an issue between China and New Zealand and we value our relationship with New Zealand.”

“China and New Zealand can agree to disagree on some of the issues, that doesn’t necessarily affect our good relationship.”

There is rarely just one thing going on in the relationship with our largest trading partner.

It’s worth noting that just as the current ambassador’s comments came just hours after Acting Prime Minister David Seymour had said it was “highly likely” New Zealand would join the new defence pact, the ruling 10 years ago arrived at a time of separate tension for the New Zealand-China relationship.

NZ Steel had alleged China was “dumping” steel and pushed for action on the matter. It was widely reported (but disputed) that China had put some pressure on big Kiwi exporters to make this dumping claim go away. Eventually MBIE undertook an investigation and found that any dumping that did take place was not large enough to warrant further action.

But ten years ago truly was a different era in New Zealand-China relations.

The then ambassador may not have loved New Zealand’s position on the ruling but he went on to write a glowing piece in the NZ Herald about our relationship in early 2017, noting all the ground-breaking “firsts” New Zealand had made over the 1990s and 2000s to respect China in international forums.

Then-Prime Minister John Key had at this point travelled to China six times, with his first trip coming about five months into his premiership. Christopher Luxon has gone once - 18 months after he became prime minister. And Jacinda Ardern took 17 months to make hers.

The deterioration in the relationship has been slow and far from fatal. After all we exported just under $20 billion to China in 2025, over double what was managed in 2016. Our imports are not far behind.

But it is hard to ignore the shift in rhetoric - or the context of New Zealand seriously considering its first new defence pact in decades.

While Wang did not mention the pact in his statement, the state-aligned Global Times was happy to poke at it.

An expert told the paper that Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was attacking China’s missile test only in service of “hyping up regional security anxieties to create favourable public conditions for New Zealand to join the so-called ‘Ocean of Peace’ Alliance.”

The expert - a scholar named Chen Hong who was removed from Australia as a security risk - warned other Pacific nations that the “bloc-orientated nature” of the alliance needed to be recognised to “avoid allowing regional security to be hijacked by misleading narratives that undermine the long-term interests and autonomy of Pacific Island countries”.

'A truly open, inclusive mechanism that does not target any third party has no need to justify its existence by portraying China as a threat,“ Chen said.

There is some nuance here. Chen is not quite going so far as to say the alliance itself was a non-starter, but more that the purported justification for it was. It is hard to argue prima facie against three countries creating a defence pact when two of them already have one, but it is much easier to argue that the justification for doing so is hawkish, offensive and downright Cold War-like.

The New Zealand side would naturally argue that if China wants people to stop acting like there is a Cold War on, it should not do Cold War-ry things - such as missile tests with far less warning than is customary.

China may be somewhat surprised by how fast New Zealand has shifted on the alliance. Last week it was entirely a Fiji and Australian matter, this week Seymour was saying we were “highly likely” to join and Labour leader Chris Hipkins was making positive noises too.

China has in the past seen Fiji as a prime friend in the Pacific. Fiji was the first Pacific Island to establish relations with China and China came to its aid in 2010 when the Human Rights Council looked to criticise its record. That warmth seems to have vanished.

There are some moves afoot to keep China from over-reacting to the new pact. Unlike the proposed Aukus agreement, it does not involve China’s main adversary in the world, the United States of America. And Australia has been clear that while the new pact is designed so other countries can accede to it, they mean to keep this list to Pacific Islands Forum nations. That means New Zealand could join - but the US could not.

China’s moves in recent years and its increasing touchiness with New Zealand cannot be read without considering the US.

Back in 2016 when our relationship was strong, China was far less assertive in the wider world. The popular Obama administration was still seen as a fairly credible partner by much of the world.

The Trump administration, on the other hand, is seen as impulsive and occasionally irrational. Aid money has been pulled back from the Pacific while the invasion of Iran has harmed the entire global economy. It would be a surprise if China had not become more assertive in the Pacific, given these conditions.

The current Government’s reticence to criticise US President Donald Trump, while understandable, has only given China ammo for attacks on Western hypocrisy. After all, we are yet to see Luxon tell the media that it is “up to China” to explain how its actions in the South China Sea are legal, which is the leeway he gave the US after it bombed Iran and abducted Venezuela’s president.

Keeping the US quarantined away from the new pact could give New Zealand some breathing room. It’s not expected that the country would start any real accession talks until early next year. That’s after our general election and the US midterm polls, meaning a potential new Kiwi government that pays a lot more attention to former prime minister Helen Clark, and a Trump administration that may be busy fighting fires at home. But it seems unlikely we will be quite so happy to agree to disagree once more.