Authoritarian Friends, Democratic Enemies.

What Kind Of Empire? The thing for Kiwis to decide is what kind of empire they want to belong to. The kind that, while offering its own citizens democratic rights, demands absolute obedience from its “friends”? Or, the kind that, while authoritarian at home, takes a relaxed attitude to the domestic political arrangements of its economic “partners”?

UNDERSTANDING AUTHORITARIANISM is challenging. For New Zealanders especially, raised in one of the world’s oldest democracies, official hostility to political liberty is difficult to comprehend. Likewise the carefully organised suppression of individuals and groups deemed hostile to the state. We bridle at the brutality and injustice that characterise authoritarian regimes. “Something must be done!”, we cry. “Cease trading with these butchers! Boycott their sports teams! Send their ambassador packing! Shut down their embassy!” As a means of letting off steam it’s a highly effective strategy. As a useful means of conducting diplomacy – not so much.

The People’s Republic of China, like practically all the previous iterations of Chinese sovereignty, going back nearly 4,000 years, is a rigorously authoritarian state. The Communist Party, within which all meaningful political activity in contemporary China takes place, prizes order and obedience no less than any of the country’s previous rulers. Accordingly, disorder and disobedience are met with swift and ruthless retribution. Though the tenets of Maoism no longer constitute the basis of CPC economic policy, Mao Zedong’s methods of keeping the Chinese people in line continue to be much admired – and emulated. Authoritarianism ensures that the continuities of Chinese history continue to greatly outnumber its discontinuities. The Chinese people would have it no other way.

How does this relate to the treatment of the Uighur people of Xinjiang? Why have the Chinese authorities gone to such extreme lengths to suppress the cultural and religious traditions of this far-flung ethnic minority? The simple answer? For precisely the same reasons the USA invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and is currently imposing swingeing economic sanctions upon Iran. Fear of Islamic extremism. Beijing is also deeply concerned about the opportunities for destabilisation which the spread of Islamic extremism offers China’s enemies.

Beijing looks westward and sees the new nation states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – all of them born out of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The home of the Uighurs, the “autonomous region” of Xinjiang borders no less than three of these Soviet successor states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Rightly or wrongly, Beijing is convinced that Uighur nationalism, allied with Islamic extremism, constitutes a clear and present danger to China’s territorial integrity – and, hence, to its national security. Sporadic outbreaks of nationalistic Uighur violence have only reinforced Beijing’s fears. The mass incarceration of Uighurs in specially constructed “re-education” complexes is the Communist Party’s profoundly authoritarian response.

Those Westerners affronted by Beijing’s actions should, however, ask themselves which is worse: China’s “re-education complexes”, or the hundreds-of-thousands of Afghans and Iraqis killed by the American military? They might also like to consider the moral calculus which allowed the USA to pour munitions into Syria while the country descended into a prolonged civil war which killed tens-of-thousands, displaced upwards of half the civilian population and provided the murderous ISIS “Caliphate” with a territorial base of operations. Beijing’s hope is to “educate” its Uighur citizens out of Islamic extremism; Washington’s preference is to deliver its “lessons” via drone strikes and proxy Jihadi fighters.

New Zealand diplomacy, if it has any meaningful role to play at all vis-à-vis the plight of the Uighurs, might consider working more closely with the Russian Federation which, while no friend of Islamic extremism, continues to have strong economic ties with the “Stans”. If Moscow could reassure Beijing that it would use its good offices to restrain nationalist and religious fervour in the territories adjoining Xinjiang, Beijing, in turn, might be persuaded to relax its iron grip on the Autonomous Region. Because Beijing has great respect for New Zealand’s record of diplomatic independence, the prospect of Jacinda Ardern assuming the role of “honest broker” would almost certainly return better dividends than shouting derogatory anti-Chinese slogans from the side-lines.

Such a course of action would obviously outrage our Five Eyes partners. The expectation of Washington, London and Canberra is that the Russians will, at all times, be treated as international pariahs. One has only to recall the severe “telling-off” administered to Foreign Minister Winston Peters when he dared to suggest that New Zealand and the Russian Federation could secure considerable mutual benefits by negotiating their own free trade agreement.

This scolding from our “friends” raises the question of what – exactly – New Zealand gains from its attachment to the Anglo-Saxon empire. After all, the Americans have consistently refused to admit our dairy products in anything like the quantities authorised by the NZ-China FTA. Perhaps the time has come to pose the question of whether or not the membership fee of the Anglo-Saxon “club” has grown too high for New Zealand to go on paying?

The thing for Kiwis to decide is what kind of empire they want to belong to. The kind that, while offering its own citizens democratic rights, demands absolute obedience from its “friends”? Or, the kind that, while authoritarian at home, takes a relaxed attitude to the domestic political arrangements of its economic “partners”? The United States is an empire of the first kind – and it is growing weaker. China belongs to the second kind and, within the next twenty years or so, seems certain to become the world’s richest and most powerful nation state – albeit an authoritarian one.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 29 November 2019.

Dances With Elephants.

When elephants dance, the wise mice stick to the wall.  - Swahili Proverb.

IT BEGAN so positively: wreathed in smiles and full of promise; a government of kindness and transformation. It hasn’t lasted. In a depressingly short period of time, the poetry of campaigning was replaced by the harsh prose of governing.

It was clear, from the moment David Parker told us that the Labour-NZF-Green Government would be signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, that beneath all the glitter and shine lay the dull gleam of administrative brass. Smiles and Stardust are Jacinda’s brand. Reality is much scarier.

Over the past fortnight New Zealand has played host to gatherings of spies. The first batch arrived from the United Kingdom and the second from the United States. In the midst of these secretive arrivals and departures the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) issued its finding that the Chinese IT giant, Huawei, had failed to pass the “national security” test, and that, as a consequence, its involvement in the roll-out of Spark’s 5G communications network must cease.

Interestingly, the presence of so many foreign spooks was matched by the absence of a select band of journalists. Whisked away to Hawaii by the Orwellian-sounding “Indopacom” (the United States Indo-Pacific Command) they were brought up to speed on what one of the participants described as China’s “expansionist military strategy in the Pacific”.

One of the more accurate and justifiable criticisms of the current Chinese Government is its treatment of its Uighur population. President Xi and his administration have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent the Muslim Uighurs from embracing the radical Islamicist doctrines so familiar to us now in the West. Human rights groups report that as many as a million Uighurs may have passed through the regime’s “re-education camps”. These are not happy places.

It would seem, however, that the Uighurs are not the only population for whom “re-education” has been deemed necessary. New Zealanders, too, have been singled out for ideological rectification. Seemingly, this country has grown too fond of the Chinese regime and is in urgent need of being re-oriented towards a more reliable combination of “friendly” powers. No less a think tank than the “moderately conservative” Hoover Institution has opined that New Zealand is “particularly vulnerable” to Chinese influence.

Served up as a “test case” in a report bearing the interesting title “Chinese Influence & American Interest”, New Zealand is described as “a small state of 4.5 million people with strong trade ties to China.” These have, according to the report, led us to pursue “closer ties with China than many other nations.”

Too close, apparently, for our largest trading partner, Australia, which has, we were informed by an investment specialist interviewed for TVNZ’s “Q+A” programme, come to the view that New Zealand has allowed itself to stray too far from the accepted anti-Chinese/pro-American path laid down by Canberra.

Jacinda Ardern and her Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, have become something of a problem for the Australians. There is a slippery quality to both of them that irritates New Zealand’s oldest friend and ally. Just when they’re convinced that the Kiwis have stepped over the line – by refusing to condemn the Russians fast enough over the Salisbury chemical attack, for example – they somehow manage to skip back over it with dutiful promises of a “Pacific Re-Set”. Time for Wellington to stop playing silly buggers, says Canberra, and not in a nice way.

Hence the influx of hard men from the UK and America. Hence the sudden rise to prominence of Professor Anne-Marie Brady – New Zealand’s very own “international expert” on the diabolical cleverness of Beijing and its “magic weapons”. No coincidence, surely, that the Hoover Institution’s fortuitously timed warning about Chinese influence draws heavily on Professor Brady’s alarming academic research. Her even more alarming personal experiences, involving burglars and deflated car tyres, lends cinematic emphasis to their concern.

Our re-education, from a nation with delusions of independence, to one which knows its place in the geopolitical scheme of things, will proceed apace, although not as rapidly as with our leaders. The Huawei decision signalled to our Five Eyes partners that from now on it is their preferences, not China’s, which will dictate the shape of New Zealand foreign policy.

The Swahili have a proverb: “When elephants dance, the wise mice stick to the wall.” Or, in our case, scamper back onto the American elephant’s back.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 7 December 2018.