Chris Hipkins will take a trade delegation to China this month in the first Prime Ministerial visit to the country since the covid-19 pandemic.
Hipkins said China was one of New Zealand’s most “signifiant, wide-ranging, and complex” relationships and it would be the first Prime Minister-led trade delegation since 2018.
As the world's second largest economy, China is NZ’s largest single trading partner and purchases almost 25% of its total exports.
Hipkins said the trade mission would focus on supporting emerging exports, such as gaming and health, in an effort to broaden the products sold overseas.
NZ has been making an effort to become less reliant on exporting to China, as geopolitical tensions have sometimes created difficulties in other countries' trading relationships.
On Friday, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and NZ jointly released the statement with the United States that condemned the use of trade practices that amount to economic coercion.
Reuters reported the statement said trade-related economic coercion and non-market policies threatened the multilateral trading system and harmed relations between countries.
A week ago, New Zealand declined an invitation to do joint military exercises with China and instead urged our biggest trading partner to communicate more with the United States.
While NZ does not have a formal military alliance with the US, it is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance and coordinates with NATO on some defense issues.
Hipkins will attend a NATO meeting in July, as well as visit Brussels to discuss the new trade deal with the European Union.
The Prime Minister would not say whether the trip to China would include a meeting with President Xi Jinping.
Hipkins said the war in Ukraine was likely to come up in conversations and NZ would express its opposition to the war and encourage China to use its influence to end the conflict.
“We’ve prided ourselves in our relationship with China in being stable and consistent in our position,” he said.
Where the NZ government has concerns or a difference of opinion with the Chinese government, it would continue to raise those concerns.
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