Wellington should beware Washington's web: China Daily editorial

Relations between China and New Zealand have generally maintained a positive trajectory over the years, with their cooperation, notably in trade, investment, education and tourism, demonstrating good momentum and high-level visits and exchanges forging a good understanding and strong bonds between the two sides.

However, the good relationship that has been promoted by Beijing and Wellington is being imperiled by the United States, which is making greater efforts to pull the latter more closely into the web of alliances that it is trying to tighten around China.

In a yearly report on the country's security environment, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service labeled China a competitor, calling it a complex intelligence concern and accusing it of interference in New Zealand's internal affairs. Such unfounded accusations will cast a shadow over ties if Wellington allows them to fester.

The report, titled "New Zealand's Security Threat Environment", released on Tuesday, is supposedly intended to inform New Zealanders about the risks the country faces. But by wrongly accusing their largest trading partner of being a security threat, it is barking up the wrong tree.

The so-called competitor and intelligence concern labels are clearly borrowed from the US, which has not only fabricated China as being a strategic rival but done its best to persuade its allies to join it in its efforts to contain China's influence and curb its development momentum.

It is the US that threatens the cooperative relationship between the two countries that has served New Zealanders well. The claim of Chinese interference in New Zealand's internal affairs is both unfounded and unwarranted. Even the authors of the New Zealand report are not convinced by their spurious allegation of Chinese interference, as the report admits that it can be difficult to draw conclusive links between the interference activity and a foreign state.

The unjustified finger-pointing to scaremonger serves to show the extent to which New Zealand's security perceptions bear all the hallmarks of being made in Washington.

The US-sponsored China interference allegation is baseless and biased. Noninterference in other countries' internal affairs is a fundamental principle of China's foreign policy of do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Compared with other close US allies that have been aping each US move to confront China and glibly echoing its badmouthing of Beijing, New Zealand has always taken pride in its independent diplomacy, and Wellington has maintained and developed sound ties with Beijing.

This independent and pragmatic approach has paid off: China has been New Zealand's largest trading partner and export market for many years.

In June, Premier Li Qiang made a successful visit to New Zealand, during which the two sides reached a series of new agreements epitomizing their efforts to promote exchanges and deepen mutual understanding.

However, some in New Zealand are still obsessed with a Cold War mentality and their country's alliance with the US, which has been manifested in the country's participation in the small security cliques the US has formed with its English-speaking allies, such as AUKUS and the Five Eyes mechanism.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the China-New Zealand Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Beijing and Wellington have everything to gain by bolstering the healthy momentum of bilateral cooperation. The onus is on Wellington to steer clear of the US' disruptive and manipulative designs and misconceptions so as to maintain the right trajectory of bilateral ties.

The importance that Beijing attaches to developing good relations between the two countries has not changed, nor has the essence of the relationship between the two sides, which is win-win cooperative relations and friendship between the two peoples. Wellington should continue to work with Beijing to maintain their mutual trust and the amicable stability of bilateral ties.