On a remote stretch of land in the Cook Islands lies a second world war airstrip. Once used as a wartime supply route by American forces, the narrow runway is in dire need of resealing to allow larger tourist jets to land. Leaders on the northern island of Penrhyn have asked New Zealand, Australia and the US to help, but none have come through. Now, they hope China will step in and fund it. “That is the dream,” says Penrhyn’s executive director, Puna John Vano. “We want to maintain our…
Tag: New Zealand
New Zealand halts millions of dollars in aid to Cook Islands over deals struck with China
New Zealand has halted millions of dollars in funding to the Cook Islands over the “breadth and content” of agreements the smaller Pacific nation made with China, officials from the New Zealand foreign minister’s office has said. New Zealand, which is the Cook Islands biggest funder, won’t consider any new money for the nation until the relationship improves, a spokesperson for foreign minister Winston Peters told the Associated Press on Thursday. Cook Islands prime minister Mark Brown didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Relations between other Pacific islands…
Majority of Australians think China will be world’s most powerful country by 2035, poll finds
A majority of Australians expect China will be the most powerful country in the world by 2035 as trust in the US tumbles, new research has found. Just over one in three Australians (36%) trusted the US to act responsibly on the world stage, representing a 20-point fall from 2024 and the smallest proportion since the Lowy Institute began polling in 2005. The thinktank’s 2025 report found only one in four respondents had any confidence in president Donald Trump’s approach to world affairs – less than half of the 46%…
New Zealand PM to meet Xi Jinping as former leaders warn against becoming an ‘adversary’ of China
New Zealand’s prime minister will meet Xi Jinping on a formal visit to China next week, his office has confirmed, a week after an open letter signed by some of his predecessors warned against positioning New Zealand as an “adversary” of its biggest trading partner. Christopher Luxon is scheduled to travel to Shanghai and Beijing, before going to Europe. His office said he will meet Xi and China’s premier, Li Qiang, for a visit focused on trade, but which would also discuss “the comprehensive bilateral relationship and key regional and…
Why didn’t New Zealand impose sanctions on China?
Politicians, journalists and critics of Beijing were among those targeted by cyber-attacks run by groups backed by China, western intelligence services said this week. The separate cyber-attacks hit the US, UK and New Zealand – all members of the Five Eyes alliance. The network of five countries, which also includes Canada and Australia, share security related intelligence. While Beijing rejected claims of its involvement, the US and UK chose to take further steps against those entities they said were involved, but New Zealand took a different tack. How did the…
New Zealand parliament targeted in China-backed hack in 2021, spy agency says
A group backed by the Chinese state targeted New Zealand government services in a cyber-attack in 2021, New Zealand’s intelligence agency has said. The government and intelligence agency – the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) – confirmed the breach on Tuesday after the UK and the US accused China of similar attacks. “This is the first time we have attributed state-sponsored malicious cyber activity to the People’s Republic of China, for intrusion into New Zealand government systems,” said the GCSB director, Andrew Clark. In August 2021, the GCSB’s cybersecurity centre…
Chinese hackers infiltrated plane, train and water systems for five years, US says
An advanced group of Chinese hackers taking aim at critical US infrastructure has been active for as long as half a decade, American and allied intelligence agencies said in a joint statement on Wednesday. The US National Security Agency, US cyber watchdog CISA, the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration said that the group known as Volt Typhoon had quietly burrowed into the networks of aviation, rail, mass transit, highway, maritime, pipeline, water and sewage organizations. None of the organizations were identified by name, but the statement said that US…
Climate crisis and China-US rivalry: five top takeaways from the Pacific’s most important summit
Leaders from Pacific island countries – together with Australia and New Zealand – have just wrapped up their most important annual political talks. They wrestled with calls to phase out fossil fuels and discussed how to navigate intense rivalry between the US and China, all while trying to keep a lid on simmering internal tensions. Here’s what we learned from the weeklong Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) summit hosted by the Cook Islands. Fossil fuel phase-out call watered down Pacific island countries are especially vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme…
Undiplomatic impunity: Chinese embassy leaves New Zealand landlord with $900 bill
A landlord in New Zealand has run up against an unusual problem while trying to make his tenant pay $900 for rubbish removal: diplomatic immunity. Chandler Investments Limited claimed its tenant, the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, left a rented mews house in the capital, Wellington, without covering costs for cleaning, rubbish removal and key cutting. New Zealand’s tenancy tribunal has dismissed the claim after finding the tenant to be a state and thus protected by sovereign immunity. “Here the claim is filed against the Embassy of the…
New Zealand intelligence report accuses China of ‘foreign interference’
New Zealand’s intelligence service has accused China of foreign interference in its democracy, amid increasing tensions and geopolitical competition in the region. In a declassified threat assessment report released on Friday, the country’s spy agency, NZSIS, said there were “foreign intelligence agencies who persistently and opportunistically conduct espionage operations against New Zealand”. It discussed “the activities of three states in particular: the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia” – but focused much of its discussions of internal interference by the Chinese state, including “ongoing…