Beijing has cautioned New Zealand against joining the AUKUS alliance, stating that New Zealand should “think twice” before doing so. This warning comes after Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles announced that a delegation would be traveling to New Zealand shortly to discuss Pillar II of the AUKUS pact—the security partnership between Australia, the UK, and the United States.
This alliance is widely seen as a response to the Chinese Communist Party’s growing influence in the Pacific, and a key part of AUKUS involves the arming of the Royal Australian Navy with nuclear-powered submarines from its two partners.
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, expressed that discussions between the two countries were of “far greater acuity and importance” than ever before given the current global climate. When asked if he was concerned that joining AUKUS would have repercussions for New Zealand’s relationship with its biggest trading partner, China, Mr. Peters said: “China is a country that practices something I have got a lot of time for. They practice their national interest … and that’s what we’re doing.”
In a direct warning to New Zealand, an editorial in the China Daily—a newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP—warned Wellington that joining AUKUS would “cast a shadow on bilateral ties and even offset what has been achieved in advancing bilateral cooperation.”
The China Daily claimed that New Zealand’s ambitions to join Pillar Two of the AUKUS agreement has led to questions being asked about its non-nuclear stance and whether it intends to join the trilateral military group in trying to draw New Zealand into its fold.
Beijing’s local embassy reacted strongly to the joint ANZMIN statement, saying the CCP “strongly deplores and firmly opposes it,” claiming that it was a manifestation of “Cold War mentality” and would “undermine peace and stability.”
The recent warning is also a reversal of the China Daily’s previous editorial stance. In 2022, it carried an opinion piece by a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noting that the two countries had signed a memorandum of arrangement to jointly explore ways to work together in Belt and Road projects, with New Zealand the only Five Eyes country to do so.