Once again, New Zealand is undermining its Five Eyes partners against China. It’s one step forward, two steps back in the trans-Tasman relationship, and a PM too busy reading her fan mail to bother with piddling stuff like pandemic investigations. The only international relations matters Jacinda Ardern appears capable of dealing with are letters written in crayon.
As for getting to the truth of the Wuhan Plague, the ‘COVID Queen’ is blindly content to take Xi Jinping’s word for it.
New Zealand has refused to stand with Australia and its other Five Eyes partners to speak out against a much-criticised World Health Organisation investigation into the origins of COVID in China, as it tries to escape Beijing’s wrath.
Like Soviet propaganda, no one really believes the WHO investigation’s finding for an instant. But that’s not the point. The whole point of the “investigation” is to provide a veneer of official legitimacy for Beijing’s lies. Beijing is putting on a good show of shock that so few are going along with the caper.
The shortcomings of the investigation, which has been highly sensitive in China, were immediately pointed out in joint statements released by the four other Five Eyes nations — the US, Britain, Canada and Australia — as well as Japan, South Korea and eight other countries, and in a separate statement by the EU.
Even WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus himself, who has been criticised for being too conciliatory to Beijing during the pandemic, acknowledged data had been withheld from the investigation team.
“In my discussions with the team they expressed the difficulties they encountered in accessing raw data,” Mr Tedros said at a press conference, which was seemingly censored on the Chinese internet on Wednesday.
Still, Communist regimes can always rely on one or two useful idiots.
But in Wellington, the Ardern government said it needed more time before it would comment on the report, even though it has been circulating among WHO members for days.
“Our technical experts are currently analysing the report,” a spokeswoman for New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta told The Australian.
Once that’s done, they’ll be even longer transcribing it with crayon so that the prime minister will read it. Then there’s the laborious task of working up the pretty pictures and figuring out how to translate “novel coronavirus” into Te Reo.
Certainly, it’s not as if the Ardern government could possibly have any ulterior motive for tugging their forelocks and kissing Xi’s boots.
While Australia’s relationship with China has imploded during the pandemic, New Zealand has become Beijing’s favourite members of the Five Eyes group.
Wellington was rewarded in January with an upgrade in its free trade agreement with China. That was signed as Beijing continued a trade retaliation campaign on more than $20bn worth of Australian exports aimed at punishing the Morrison government for calling for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus without forewarning Xi Jinping’s administration.
Tony Browne, a former New Zealand ambassador to China, said[…]“Calling China into account for the nature of its political management of the issue might sound like a good thing to do, but you know for certain it’s not going to go anywhere in terms of any sort of co-operative involvement from China.”
The Australian
In other words, the New Zealand government is going to shut up, toe the CCP line and take Beijing’s money.
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