Disharmonious Fists: China: the country which, unlike the United States, has been willing to open her markets to New Zealand’s agricultural exports on a truly massive scale. The country which, more than any other, kept New Zealand afloat during the Global Financial Crisis. The country which, in return for keeping our economy healthy, asks of us only two things: equal access to our markets; and tangible evidence of our respect.
IRONICALLY, THE CONCERN over Chinese influence in New
Zealand is being raised against a backdrop of unchallenged American hegemony.
Extending across the whole width of the nation’s political stage, this American
backdrop has become so much a part of the play’s scenery that most Kiwis no
longer notice it. The inclusion of a few Chinese props, however, is enough to
induce something close to panic among New Zealand’s political class.
That this country remains enmeshed in the intelligence
gathering networks of the United States National Security Agency, for example,
is considered problematic by only a very small minority of New Zealanders.
Between the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942 and the passage of New Zealand’s
anti-nuclear legislation in 1985, most Kiwis simply assumed that the United
States would always be their country’s principal military protector. America’s
strategic planners seemed to agree, because they never for a moment considered
suspending New Zealand from the so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence-gathering
alliance. Dropping us out of the ANZUS Pact was considered punishment enough.
Moreover, as Nicky Hager’s book “Other People’s Wars” make
clear, from the moment New Zealand was suspended from the ANZUS Pact, elements
of what passes for this country’s “deep state” undertook to rebuild this
country’s damaged relationship with the United States. Senior civil servants
like Gerald Hensley simply refused to accept the Fourth Labour Government’s
foreign and defence policies.
With the Wellington Declaration of 2010, and the Washington
Declaration of 2012, the rift between the United States and New Zealand became
a thing of the past. It had taken Hensley and his successors 25 years, but the
anti-nuclear rebel was finally back in what Prime Minister John Key called “The
Club”.
For those of you wondering what the Wellington Declaration
(signed by Hillary Clinton and Murray McCully) entails – here’s the guts of it:
“The United States-New Zealand strategic partnership is to
have two fundamental elements: a new focus on practical cooperation in the
Pacific region; and enhanced political and subject-matter dialogue — including
regular Foreign Ministers’ meetings and political-military discussions.”
The content of the Labour-NZF Coalition government’s Defence
White Paper, far from being a departure from existing policy, is clearly a
reaffirmation of the previous National-led government’s re-commitment to the
United States.
These diplomatic and military links are merely the most
formal manifestations of US hegemony in New Zealand. Beyond and beneath them
extends an intricate network of personal, cultural and economic relationships
that binds together inextricably the American and New Zealand political
classes.
So many Kiwis have studied and worked in the United States.
So many exchange students have come and gone. So many of our military and
police officers have been seconded to serve alongside their American
counterparts. So many of our best and brightest graduates have been
shoulder-tapped for a stint in Washington or New York.
So numerous are these relationships that they could be said
to constitute a veritable “fifth column” of American power in New Zealand
society. Even if Kiwis elected a government committed to breaking free from the
tutelage of the USA, the resistance from these US “assets” in our foreign
affairs, military, business and media bureaucracies would be formidable.
Also to be considered is the all-pervasive influence of
American “soft power” on New Zealand society. So much of the digital
information we receive, the movies and television shows we watch, the music we
listen to, the clothes we wear and the vocabulary we use in our everyday speech
hails from the United States. Our directors and screenwriters head for Los
Angeles and New York. Young Maori and Pasifika from South Auckland emulate the
musical and dance styles of Black and Hispanic Americans. Even our news and
current-affairs shows formats are borrowed from the US. How much of New Zealand
culture is genuinely indigenous? Three-quarters? Half? A quarter? Less? Living
in the shadow of a great power can be a profoundly disintegrative experience.
We have been here before, of course. Back in the days of
“Mother England” when New Zealand made a fetish of being the most loyal of the
British Empire’s “dominions across the sea”. British hegemony in the century
between the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Battle of the Coral Sea
was no less all-encompassing than the hegemonic networks of the United States.
There was, however, one important difference between British
and American rule. Up until 1973, the United Kingdom was happy to assign New
Zealand the highly remunerative role of the Mother Country’s South Seas farm.
The Americans, however, have never expressed the slightest interest in taking
all the agricultural produce New Zealanders would be only too delighted to send
them – quite the reverse, in fact. American farmers have worked tirelessly to
keep the highly-efficient Kiwis primary exports out of their markets.
Which brings us to China: the one country which has been
willing to open her markets to New Zealand’s agricultural exports on a truly
massive scale. The country which, more than any other, kept New Zealand afloat
during the Global Financial Crisis. The country which, in return for keeping
our economy afloat, asks of us only two things: equal access to our markets;
and tangible evidence of our respect.
To secure this reciprocation, China is doing no more than
any other powerful state will do to achieve its national objectives. It is
building relationships with its trading partner’s political and economic
elites; and, it is projecting its soft power as far as possible into their
society. In other words, behaving exactly as the British and Americans have
behaved in relation to New Zealanders – albeit on a much, much smaller scale.
If New Zealand’s American “friends” are so anxious to have
us remove the handful of Chinese props from our political stage, then perhaps
it is time for us to replace their all-American backdrop with something
Kiwi-made.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 20 July 2018.
