In July 2020, two Chinese New Zealanders were killed in a car crash. Wang Yuezhong and Xi Weiguo were on their way to parliament, trying to bring a message to the New Zealand government. The dead men wanted us to wake up to the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party, but never got to deliver their message.
This is a story where global politics hits up hard against people’s lives.
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New Zealand’s relationship with China goes deep. We were the first western country to support China's membership of the World Trade Organization in 1997, the first developed country to recognise China as a market economy in 2004 and the first developed country to sign a Free Trade Agreement with it in 2008.
Since signing the FTA, trade has gone up between the two countries by more than three hundred percent, to over 32 billion dollars. China is by far our largest trading partner, taking roughly 30 percent of our exports.
But increasingly, China’s internal and external politics are coming under scrutiny. Crackdowns in Hong Kong, tensions in the South China Sea and more than a million Uighurs in internment camps, suffering forced labour, sterilisations and torture. One by one, western countries are calling the situation genocide.
But not New Zealand. Instead, we have “grave concerns”. Our government continues to walk a thin line - a thin red line - between our traditional western friendships and our increasingly important commercial relationship with China.
Red Line hosts and producers, John Daniell and Guyon Espiner. Photo: RNZ
In this four-part investigation Guyon Espiner and John Daniell look at China's growing influence in New Zealand. And across the region. They go to protests, universities, parliament, and the homes of dissidents talking to politicians, business leaders, experts and even American military leaders to chart what that influence looks like.
How do you view New Zealand’s relationship with the world’s rising superpower? Are we paranoid? Or is the Chinese Communist Party out to get us?
You can subscribe to the full four-part series of Red Line at Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen any time on rnz.co.nz/series from June 28 and also hear it on Sunday Mornings at 7am from July 4, on RNZ National.
Photo: Bird Of Paradise Productions
Photo: RNZ
