I 100% absolutely agree with that. For China to become more human rights and environmentally friendly will take time, we have to educate them to our way of thinking and I don’t think blackmail is the way to go.

“We as New Zealanders have absolutely nothing to be proud of.”

Not true, your rugby team has been for many years widely regarded as the best in the world.

jingyang Says:
Oh, and as a general PS to this thread, given China’s water and air quality, I wouldn’t recommend eating any Chinese foodstuff that hasn’t been processed to within an inch of its life

Good point.

I struggle with the concept that our farmers are encouraged to export high quality produce, to the point we often can’t get it at a reasonable price here, while the rest of us are reduced to importing cheaper food of questionable quality from who-knows-where.

It just seems that our society has become disjointed somehow.

You are right that Australia is wealthy because of its minerals. You are wrong about New Zealand’s tax system being ridiculous. Compared to Australia, New Zealand’s tax system is very simple and streamlined, and as far as I can determine the tax rates are similar.

In Australia, GST doesn’t apply to all items (as it does in NZ), for example food is excluded (may be a good thing). The personal income tax system is very complicated. There are all sorts of rebates and offsets which can be claimed, and the tax returns are horrendously complicated compared to NZ. I can’t see how this is a good thing.

It did.

Of course, there were other factors, but the key factor is they geared up the manufacturing base. There are obvious parallels with the Chinese manufacturing base - low wages, clear direction, and cheap commodities - mostly electronics, cars and steel.

Which eventually led to a tiger.

That has more to do with Australia’s mineral wealth and our ridiculous tax system and employment law.

In the last decade, countries that have been more open have achieved double the annual average growth of others.

Actually, no they haven’t. NZ is one of the most open countries and has fallen further behind more protected Australia.

Funny how some people won’t let the facts get in the way of their bias.

Especially considering that NZ food is just as readily available and is usually of a high standard, or if it is not you have some recourse. Good luck trying to get compensation for your chemical poisoning from a Chinese company.

You refer to the example of Japan as proving that trade is a good thing. If you dig a little deeper I think that you’ll find that a/the Japanese “cheated” outrageously by having very high tariffs and a labyrinthine local distribution system to keep imports down, and that B/ what gave Japan a very good chunk of the initial wealth to rebuild (after being flattened in WW2) was supplying the US army in Korea; C/ the Japanese government enagaged in some very severe union bashing in the 1950s to ensure that wages stayed low and D/ the country has effectively been a one-party state for more than 50 years.

So simply saying “trade” made them wealthy is rather simplistic..and it was not a particularly invisible hand either.

I also sincerely hope that you not advocating that NZ follow their example?