I’ve warned The BFD’s readers several times that Jacinda Ardern and Victorian premier Dan Andrews have some disturbing things in common. Both are dime-store socialists who’ve raced to outdo each other in the severity of their COVID lockdowns. Neither has any knowledge or experience in the private sector, hence their shared delusion that economies can be switched on and off at the government’s whim. As socialists, both are innately inclined to Big Government authoritarianism.
And neither have any compunction about hocking themselves to the largest and worst authoritarian regime of the 21st century.
New Zealand and China will upgrade its free trade agreement (FTA) within the framework of the controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), according to a report by Chinese Global Television Network (CGTN) on Sept. 25.
“Dictator Dan” Andrews sent shockwaves through Australian political and intelligence circles when he signed to China’s notorious BRI in 2018, the only Australian state to do so. Australia’s peak intelligence agency, ASIO, announced that it was monitoring the agreement. Foreign policy analysts warned that Andrews lacked the experience or ability to control China’s influence via the BRI.
“Experience” and “ability” are not exactly watch-words one associates with Jacinda Ardern, either.
Naturally, Beijing is thrilled to have yoked another naive Western leader to its belt.
Gao Feng, a spokesperson from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), reportedly announced the news at the virtual China–New Zealand Joint Committee of Trade and Economy meeting on Sept. 23.
The upgrade aims to deepen cooperation in infrastructure, agriculture, and tourism, Gao said. CGTN reported that New Zealand and China would also maintain communication on research, medicine, and vaccine development.
Those words are especially ominous given China’s brazen theft of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property, especially stealing research via double-agents in academia under the auspices of its “Thousand Talents Program”.
Signing up to the BRI will leave New Zealand politically isolated from the rest of the Anglosphere as it hasn’t been since the days of David Lange.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared in May that the United States would disconnect from any partner that it saw as putting at risk its national interests—including by signing up to the BRI.
In an interview on SkyNews, Pompeo warned Australia and its Five Eyes allies to look very closely at BRI agreements.
“There’s often money loaned at concessional rates or conditions placed in the debt documents or government concessions that have to be made to the Chinese Communist Party to get those Belt and Road Initiative projects built. Those present real risk—real risk to the people in that region, a real risk to your country,” Pompeo said.
As many small nations have already found, but Andrews and Ardern are apparently too besotted to see, the BRI is a Trojan horse that promises a river of gold only to have it flow all one way – back to China.
Fortunately, Australia’s federal government has introduced the Foreign Relations Bill, which will ultimately tear up Victoria’s foolish deal with China. Unfortunately, New Zealand has no such adult in the room.
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