As Prime Minister Chris Hipkins begins a major trip to China, MPs have discussed what New Zealand can do in response to a Chinese scholarship drive that could see large numbers of Pacific students become 'immersed' in the superpower's culture
New Zealand should be doing more to counter China’s scholarship drive in the Pacific as part of wider influence efforts in the region, a senior opposition MP says.
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta has suggested a future government could look at treating scholars from Pacific nations as domestic rather than international students – but warned such a change would take “significant work and commitment”.
Speaking to Parliament’s foreign affairs, defence and trade committee on Thursday as part of the post-Budget estimates process, Mahuta said Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ upcoming visit to China was a welcome opportunity to solidify economic ties and talk about “significant and substantial issues” facing the world.
“There is no desire to see a scenario play out in the Indo-Pacific where strategic rivalry between the US and China plays out in a way where it will … disadvantage the broader region.”
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Mahuta described US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent trip to Beijing as a welcome sign of US-China engagement, and said New Zealand would continue to act in a “consistent and respectful” manner when it came to its own relationship.
“There's nothing that we would say about China in public that we wouldn't say in private, and we should be continuing along that pathway in the management of a complex relationship.”
Speaking about Chinese diplomat Wang Yi’s high-profile tour of the Pacific last year, National Party foreign affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee asked how the Government was working with partners to counter the large-scale offer of scholarships for Pacific students.
“The Chinese offer was 6000 places over four years in the documents that we’ve seen: if you extrapolate that out over 10 years, that is an extraordinary number of graduate Pacific Islanders who would have studied in China for three more years and been immersed in their culture,” Brownlee said.
Bernadette Cavanagh, the deputy secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Pacific and development group, said students from Pacific nations made up more than half of the 1300 scholarships offered as part of the Government’s Manaaki programme for international scholars.
Mahuta said New Zealand would never be able to compete with China at scale when it came to such programmes, but its common values with the Pacific and the large diaspora community here would provide an added incentive for students to come here.
However, the inability of most Pacific youth to undertake tertiary study in New Zealand without being classed as international students – with the resulting fees – was a significant inhibitor to expanding the numbers coming here.
“That is a big policy piece, that would have to take some significant work and commitment … but that could be a way where we could counter [China], not at scale but with intent, how we would treat our Pacific family.”
However, Brownlee said China did not “bother itself with the sort of intricacies and policy that we are able to do” and was making inroads already. “I’m worried that we’re not even looking at it," he added.
Writing for the Pacific Forum’s PacNet publication last year, East-West Center projects coordinator Kimery Lynch described China’s scholarship push in the Pacific as “an urgent national security issue” for the United States.
“The more Pacific Islanders study at Chinese institutions, the more sympathetic they will be to China when voting in an election or making policy decisions, and at least some of those scholars will ascend to positions of leadership in their country,” Lynch wrote.
“How could it be otherwise, given that China will have supported their educational and professional development, and they will have spent several years living there and making personal connections?”
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While US allies like New Zealand and Australia offered scholarships for Pacific Islanders, China was further stepping up its own efforts and planning to start a new training programme for young Pacific diplomats.
Lynch called on the US government to increase funding for Pacific scholarship and training programmes, saying such efforts would “remove any temptation” for Pacific nations to sign trade and security deals with China in future.
However, University of the South Pacific vice-chancellor Pal Ahluwalia earlier this month criticised the contribution of Western aid providers to the region’s “brain drain”, citing an American proposal to provide scholarships for his university’s students to attend US institutes.
Ahluwalia said his university could educate “probably seven people” for the same amount of money it would cost to send one student overseas, Times Higher Education reported.
