Chris Hipkins lands in China with a frenetic week ahead

Beijing | ANALYSIS: Prime Minister Chris Hipkins landed in Beijing in the early hours on Monday morning (NZT) with a sizeable business delegation and a busy schedule ahead. In the throes of a hot sino summer, Hipkins was greeted with a motorcade of electric vehicles and Chinese soldiers. He will be in town at the same time as the leaders of Vietnam and Barbados.

Hipkins is in China for a week doing a series of high level political meetings including with President Xi Jinping as well as business meetings with New Zealand exporters, cut a relaxed figure on a packed airforce plane into China.

The aging NZDF aircraft – which has a short range – skipped up from Wellington to Beijing via Cairns in North Queensland and Manilla in the Philippines.

Hipkins’ first morning on the ground will be spent getting briefings from local New Zealand embassy officials – briefings that will no doubt include the extraordinary situation in unfolding in Russia where Wagner group mercenaries initiated and then abandoned an armed assault on Moscow.

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It remains, however, a fluid situation. Beijing – which even during the eras when both it and the USSR were officially communist has never had an easy relationship with Moscow – has been closely watched for any support or signals it has given to the Putin regime.

China will not be impressed by this latest development, proving further that Putin has a tenuous grip on power.

And the withdrawal of the Wagner group (which is one of a number of Russian mercenary groups) throws the Russian war effort – already a shambles – into disarray. It is, in all likelihood, the beginning of the end for Vladimir Putin. But how long that takes is anyone’s guess.

Nor should it be assumed that if Putin were to be replaced, his successor would be some sort of pro-democratic reformer. In a nation that is run along the general principles of elite gangsterism with armed forces and powerful resource companies to sustain and defend in groups, the replacement for one gangster is likely to be another.

So that will give an interesting hue to Hipkins’ discussions.

More than that however, this is a trip to roll over existing business relationships and to work out the future shape of China trade.

Much has been made, both at a business and a geo-strategic level, about not putting too many eggs in the China basket. Making sure that no particular industries or companies are over-exposed to what can be a capricious regime. New Zealand explains it to China in terms of traumatic memories from the UK joining the European community in the early 1970s.

This little bit of myth-making works because it has the advantage of being mostly true.

But it is also true that the shape of New Zealand’s post-Covid business engagement with China will be different to pre-2020. It will be dominated by the big primary producers such as Fonterra, Silverfern Farms, and Zespri, while the tech sector will be far less prominent than prior to Covid.

In fact, while too much is made of any imminent geo-strategic choice that has to be made between China and the West, there are increasingly two different sets of digital institutions and architectures emerging. And increasingly, the two systems do not mix.

After the briefings, Hipkins will spend the afternoon at a New Zealand tourism event before departing for Tianjin for a summer meeting of the World Economic Forum.

This is an important trip for Hipkins and an important one for New Zealand seeking to fully re-engage politically with the nation’s biggest trading partner.