China:
New Zealand and Australia downplayed policy variations on China Monday, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern denying Wellington was taking a soft stance on human rights to prevent offending its biggest trading companion.
Ardern’s government has taken flak more than its meek criticisms of China’s rights record, though Australia’s more outspoken position has drawn punitive trade measures from Beijing.
The centre-left New Zealand leader insisted the trans-Tasman allies have been lock-step on attitudes towards China just after holding talks with her Australian counterpart Scott Morrison in the South Island mountain retreat of Queenstown.
The pair issued a joint statement expressing “deep concern” at the erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong and the remedy of the Uyghur Muslim minority in China’s Xinjiang province.
“You’ll see that Australia and New Zealand have broadly been positioned in exactly the same place on these issues consistently,” Ardern told reporters.
“So I really push back on any suggestion that we are not taking a strong stance on these incredibly important issues.”
Ardern and Morrison also backed a push to additional investigate the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, which remains a sensitive subject for China.
The New Zealand government declined to sign a statement from the Five Eyes intelligence network last year condemning developments in Hong Kong, and this month insisted on removing the word “genocide” from a parliamentary motion about the plight of the Uyghurs.
Australia has totally backed the Five Eyes statements, sparking fiery rhetoric from Beijing along with import levies on a variety of Australian solutions.
Morrison stated he did not think New Zealand was a weak hyperlink in the spy network, which also consists of the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.
“Neither of us will ever trade our sovereignty or our values, we have stood side by side to defend those values,” he stated.
Morrison stated each Australia and New Zealand wanted a free of charge and peaceful Indo-Pacific area and would work to make certain that target was not threatened by increasing China-US tensions.
“The world is being characterised by increased strategic competition between the United States and China, that is a self-evident fact,” he stated.
“I would say our shared view is that such strategic competition does not need to lead to increased likelihood of conflict.”
Ardern also glossed more than other irritants in the trans-Tasman relationship, which includes Canberra’s policy of deporting New Zealand-born criminals even if they have been in Australia for most of their lives.
“As with any family, we will have our disagreements from time to time but… we are much bigger than our differences,” she stated.
(This story has not been edited by TheSpuzz employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)