Ahead of his first visit to China, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has been at pains to present meetings with Chinese premier Xi Jinping and other leaders as advancing New Zealand’s best interests.
But there is arguably a degree of cognitive dissonance involved, given the government’s increasing strategic entanglement with the United States – specifically, the administration of President Donald Trump.
It was this perceived pivot towards the US that earlier this month saw a group of former senior politicians, including former prime ministers Helen Clark and Geoffrey Palmer, warn against “positioning New Zealand alongside the United States as an adversary of China”.
