SMELLIE'S RANT: Not on, mate
By Pattrick Smellie
June 18 (BusinessWire) - The visit to New Zealand of the apparent heir to the Chinese presidency, Xi Jinpeng, is
incredibly important for the burgeoning and unusually affectionate relationship between the world's new powerhouse
economy and New Zealand.
Xi visited the offices of Rakon Ltd today, and photos will have been taken with all the top brass which will be flashed
like gold bars for years to all the right people and used to open doors, prove bona fides, and raise Rakon in the esteem
of innumerable Chinese local government officials with whom the NZX-listed company deals in China.
The crystal oscillator manufacturer, supplying components for mobile phones and global positioning system devices, has
recently opened a manufacturing facility in the city of Chengdu.
All fine.
Very polite, very Asian. New Zealanders may furtively display pictures of themselves in the company of famous people,
but it's more likely they'll be embarrassed if anyone points it out. Very self-deprecating, very Kiwi.
It's also very Kiwi that you can go where you like, when you like, and say what you like.
It's one of the reasons people say we're creative even if we're not that wealthy.
So enough is enough.
It is time for Chinese security officials, embassy staff and the other kow-tow-ers whose cultural sensitivities extend
to ripping Tibetan flags from the hands of elected New Zealand Members of Parliament, to realise that this is not how it
goes here.
As someone with no axe to grind about Asian investors in New Zealand cities and farms - being one of the few who
welcomes this phenomenon and sees it as a complex but exciting, let alone unavoidable, future - it is enraging to see
such arrogance.
Enraging in part because such stupidity makes China's path into New Zealand so much more difficult.
There are a lot of rules that New Zealand - a small, heavily foreign indebted nation contending with low productivity,
remoteness and a narrow product base - has to obey in the world.
Pretending issues don't exist isn't one of them.