China has lodged a formal protest after New Zealand’s top diplomat told a Chinese-born lawmaker to “go back to your own country,” a comment that has also prompted calls at home for the minister’s dismissal.
The foreign minister Winston Peters, leader of the populist New Zealand First party and a longtime political kingmaker in New Zealand, made the remarks during a heated debate in the Parliament in Wellington on Wednesday in a retort to Lawrence Xu-Nan, a Green Party lawmaker whose family had immigrated when he was a child.
Responding to a shouted question from Mr. Xu-Nan about whether he was vaccinated for Covid-19, Mr. Peters said: “I know you just came here five minutes ago. Go back to your own country, that’s where they lie like a flatfish. But they don’t lie like that here.”
The Chinese Embassy in New Zealand said in a statement that it had “lodged solemn representations,” a phrase Beijing uses to signal it has made a formal complaint or protest, with the country’s foreign ministry, saying members of the Chinese diaspora were well-integrated and “deserve to be recognized and respected.” New Zealanders of Chinese heritage make up about 5.6 percent of the population, according to the latest census.
Asked about Mr. Peters’s comments, Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, said, “It is hoped that relevant individual in New Zealand will do more things that contribute to the friendship between our two countries, and refrain from making China an issue in domestic politics.”
