Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is travelling to China today as he prepares for an official meeting with President Xi Jinping later this week.
There’ll be plenty to discuss across a range of areas including trade, education and tourism.
Two-way trade between our nations was valued at just over $38 billion last year.
New Zealand’s major goods exports include dairy – predominantly milk powder, butter and cheese – while fruit such as kiwifruit and apples are also a favourite within the Chinese market.
Meat products are also high in demand as are forestry and wood products.
“I want to grow everywhere, so it’s China and everywhere,” Luxon said.
“There’s still a lot of opportunity for us to collaborate and to drive more growth between the countries.”
There are two major areas which require more work to see demand return to pre-Covid levels.
Immigration data shows arrivals from China for the year ended March 2025 were 248,353, compared with arrivals for the year to Dec 2019 of 407,141, just prior to the pandemic.
It means current visitors from China are at 61% of 2019 levels.
“We’ve got some work to do to build back our tourism numbers out of China, but also our international students out of China,” Luxon said.
China is New Zealand’s third-largest tourism market, with most travellers arriving from Shanghai – its largest city.
A tourism event will be the first port of call for Luxon upon arrival in the city on Wednesday.
In terms of international students to New Zealand, there were around 25,000 Chinese students enrolled between January and August last year. When looking at 2019 levels, the figure for 2024 sits at around 67%, meaning there’s room to grow.
“They’re very open to doing business with New Zealand, buying New Zealand products and services, travelling here, sending their students here to study,” Luxon said.
“We just want to make sure that we’re not getting outgunned by our competitor countries there.”
The Prime Minister spoke ahead of his big trip to discuss what he hoped to achieve as well as the more challenging aspects of the visit.
Also on the trip are 28 New Zealand business leaders and current Te Matatini champions Te Kapa Haka o Ngāti Whakaue.
“I think a lot of this trip is really about raising the awareness of New Zealand within China,” Luxon said.
Security and defence
One of the more challenging topics of conversation however will be security and defence.
The relationship with China, while amicable, has become strained in recent years.
An open letter recently published in newspapers nationwide and signed by a raft of high profile political stalwarts and business people criticised the current of direction of travel of New Zealand’s foreign policy.
The political signatories included Helen Clark as former Prime Minister and former Administrator of the UN Development Programme, Sir Geoffrey Palmer as former Prime Minister and former president of the NZ Law Commission, Sir David Carter as former Minister of Agriculture and Speaker of Parliament, Don Brash as former Governor of the Reserve Bank and former Leader of the Opposition.
Signatories from the business sector included Carl Worker as chairman of the NZ subsidiary of a leading Chinese bank, David Mahon as former New Zealand ambassador to China and a businessman resident in Beijing since 1984.
“I think it’s been getting worse,” Brash said of the China relationship.
“I think the government has done a number of things which have antagonised China.”
Speaking to 1News from his home in Tauranga, Brash said the upcoming visit by Luxon was an important one.
“I hope that the Prime Minister’s visit to China at this time will do some distance to improving that relationship,” he said.
The signatories behind the letter believe New Zealand is damaging the relationship with China as it moves closer towards a relationship with the US over security.
“Our country has for many years enjoyed a cordial relationship with both the United States and China,” the letter states.
“Both countries were comfortable with that in the past. But more recently, the United States has described China not only as a competitor, but also as an adversary, and has been putting pressure on other countries to take sides.”
In September last year the HMNZS Aotearoa sailed alongside Australia’s HMAS Sydney through the Taiwan Strait.
It’s a contested waterway which borders China and was the first time a New Zealand navy vessel had made the trip since 2017.
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“We’ve sent a naval ship through the Taiwan Strait knowing that that would antagonise China,” Brash said.
“We’ve formed a kind of military relationship with the Philippines when they were in the semi-state of war with China. We’ve sent delegations of MPs to Taiwan knowing that that will offend China.”
Brash said it showed New Zealand was going out of its way “to make China angry with us”.
‘We’ve been very straight up’
Luxon maintained his focus was on re-enforcing the international rules-based system.
“We’re seeing conflicts in different places all around the world. We’ve got flashpoints and tensions within our own region. New Zealand wants to see peace and stability within the region,” Luxon said.
Asked whether the Government’s attitude on such matters was damaging the relationship, Luxon said “no, I disagree”.
“We’ve been very straight up that we will have differences,” he said.
“That’s expected in a mature relationship. Where we have them, we raise them. And we do so, as I’ve said, publicly, privately, consistently, predictably.”
Asked if he would raise his views with President Xi, he suggested he would.
“We expect all countries to adhere to the rules-based system…where that doesn’t happen, we have those conversations,” he said.
Brash said he believed the conversation should go a little differently, insisting Luxon give an undertaking around the Taiwan Strait.
“I would like him to say, we won’t again be sailing naval ships through the Taiwan Strait,” Brash said.
“That’s at the very least he should say. We should not be doing that.”
That however is unlikely, with the Prime Minister claiming it’s all above board.
“We expect freedom of navigation. It’s part of the international rules-based system,” Luxon said.
Luxon touches down in Shanghai on Wednesday, before making his way to Beijing a day later and with his meeting with President Xi scheduled for Friday.
