A strategy for Asia?
In this 2010 opinion piece, Asia:NZ executive director Dr Richard Grant lays out his thoughts on strategic issues for New Zealand prompted by the rise of Asia and reflects on why the Foundation's core mission is more valid now than ever before.
There has been some public commentary of recent times (see Fran O’Sullivan’s New Zealand Herald article of 14 July and Colin James’ Dominion Post article of 5 July) about a China strategy for New Zealand. In my view, a strategy for China gives rise to the question of “Why just China?” What about a broader strategy that stretches further to the whole Asian region?
I should add to the debate a number of considerations which affect the way in which our lives are being changed by the rise of Asia – in which process the growth of both China and India are most obvious, but one should not overlook either, if one is concentrating on economic growth, countries like Vietnam and Indonesia as well. And, of course, Japan continues to be the world’s second economy, even if its days in that slot are numbered.
But it is not just the economy: on many strategic issues for New Zealand, the role of Asian countries in determining how these issues are played out is growing constantly.
The Asia New Zealand Foundation has as its core mission, making New Zealanders more aware of Asia, and more knowledgeable about it. This mission is clearly even more valid today when the Foundation is 16 years old, as it was when it was set up in 1994.
More of Asia in everyday life
Let me say, first of all, that most New Zealanders have more of Asia in their lives in 2010 than they did in 2000, or in 1990. In large part, this “increasing presence” has come upon them unawares. New Zealanders do not think too much about country of origin when driving a Toyota or a Hyundai; when watching TV on a Samsung or a Panasonic; when buying their tools made in China from the hardware store, or their clothes from The Warehouse with the same origin.
In broad consumer terms, Asia has arrived here already, and the share of our imports that come from the broader Asian region has increased from 30 percent in 1995 to over 40 percent today. And it is irreversible. No-one is going to go back to earlier patterns of consumption where non-Asian countries dominated our import statistics.
Secondly, and much more importantly because it is a long-term change in our lives, the percentage of New Zealanders who are of Asian ancestry is growing, and will continue to grow. The Foundation commissioned a series of reports in 2008 (see Asians in New Zealand: Implications of a Changing Demography by Richard Bedford and Elsie Ho), which brought to public attention for the first time the nature and the speed of this change.
In short, by 2026 the expectation is that 16 percent of New Zealanders will claim Asian descent.
This is highly significant for a number of reasons, but not least because of the way it impinges on how any government might view the ingredients of a “strategy for Asia”. In just over a decade a fifth of us New Zealanders will have an automatic point of reference to that region of the world. In 1994 only 3 percent of us did.
So, it is natural today, and will be more so in the future, that a growing number of New Zealanders will be more interested in what is happening in Shanghai than what is happening in Amsterdam, or what is happening in Manila than in Manchester.
Second, the size of our Asian communities – for they are multiple, not just “Asian” – will draw attention from Asian governments, if only to see whether their fellows are being successfully and positively integrated into New Zealand society. In New Zealand we like to look at the Kiwi diaspora as part of our success in the outside world, and draw from them. We shall need to expect that governments in Asia will do so with their communities here, and with their children, and their children’s children.
The last part is particularly relevant as the statistics show us that we have now more people from Asia – in the broad – born in New Zealand than are migrants. And this trend will grow. So, it will not be an immigration issue – it is about how we view our own citizens.
Third, this population provides a natural link back to their places of origin of a size and substance that New Zealand has not known before. The advantages to us of that fact are clear: not just in education or in business; but in culture, in media, and in forming a support group for New Zealand in Asian countries.
So, to summarise this, New Zealand has to look at Asia with different eyes because more New Zealanders of today and of the future will be different from those of preceding generations and will expect Asia to be part of their New Zealand experience.
Bringing Asia Awareness to future generations
The most immediate effect of this has to be in the education system of this country. The Foundation has an important programme of bringing “Asia Awareness” to the schools up and down New Zealand. In allying with the business community to form the Business Education Partnership to bring a business perspective into play; in working with the Ministry of Education on curriculum materials and advocacy; in working with schools and principals who want to take up that challenge, the Foundation has set itself some very challenging benchmarks.
The Prime Minister was much quoted when he visited Shanghai in July about the number of New Zealand children learning Latin as opposed to Chinese. That was a fact that we had brought to his attention. It is not just a headline. It is also a wake-up call. We do not advocate that every child learn Chinese, any more than we advocate that every child learn Japanese or French, but until the numbers of children studying Chinese increase, our knowledge of that country will be less than we need to understand modern China.
Languages are not all. Our research shows (see our “Asia in Secondary Schools” report) that in the secondary school system, by and large, we are not teaching enough about Asian countries, their cultures, their history, to equip New Zealanders with the sort of background they need to cope with a world where the centre of global balance has moved to Asia.
So, the domestic scene is a challenge. We have some advantage in that we can identify some of the things which need to be done to help us.
Externally – and this comes back to the remarks which Fran O’Sullivan and Colin James made, there are a number of considerations.
Defining our alignments for the 21st century
If one looks at New Zealand’s history of “engagement” with other countries over the last 100 years or so, one could make the case that we have been “strategically engaged”, particularly in the economic sense, with only two countries, despite our attempts to do otherwise. Those two countries are the United Kingdom up till the 1970s and Australia since the 1980s. Our attempts to do so with the United States foundered on our anti-nuclear policy, and our attempts to do so with Japan were not enough to convince the Japanese that it was a strategic play for them.
Looking at the relationship with the United Kingdom in days gone by or with Australia today, one is struck by the complexity of both, and the wide areas of New Zealand life into which they reached or do reach.
We know that China will be the pre-eminent power in our region over time. We can see already – it has grown with rocket-like speed to be our second trading partner after Australia – that it has a huge influence on our economic life. This we have to manage.
For China itself, the economic relationship with New Zealand is not significant in the broader sense of things. But the whole of the relationship with New Zealand does have some importance for them.
It does for New Zealand as well, but we have to look beyond the trade statistics.
What do we think of Chinese investment in this country? Do we wish to encourage Chinese investment in our strategic industries in the way that we have sought such investment from others around the globe over many decades?
Do we have a view on migration and tourism from China?
What is our view, for instance, on China’s growing military expenditure? Do we worry, as we have worried in the past, about the projection of military power from the Asian landmass into the South Pacific?
And we need to pay attention to the views of our other partners in Asia, who also have views on what the rise of China means for them, and for the region. And those partners include Australia and the United States, both vitally interested in the development of the Asian region.
All these sorts of questions relating to China are merely a reflection of the fact that, indubitably and without much resistance, New Zealand has finally realised that, in an Asian century, our geographical position puts us more in alignment with a region of growing strength than with a region of decreasing strength. And how we handle that is the question which New Zealand governments for some time – for only the blind could say that we haven’t seen it coming – have had to deal with, and will have to deal with in the future.
The main issue for any government is to see that our interests get taken into account when they are in play. We may be, by our call, geographically in the region, but there are those in the region who suggest that we are not a part of it. We can point to our growing trade relationships, but others can point to what a small market New Zealand offers them. We can say that we have taken a strong security interest in the affairs of the region for over 80 years, but our defence budget is not exactly significant when compared to others.
In other words, the responsibility for stating our interest in, if not our right in, being at the table when our interests are considered, is always one that New Zealand has to make. Others won’t necessarily make it for us.
In so doing, we have to be able to show what our qualities are, and what we can bring to the table as well, to help others in their pursuit of national interests.
A regional backdrop of unprecedented developments
All this is traditional foreign policy and traditional diplomacy, but it is taking place against a background which is not as stable as we liked to think.
First of all, the world has not seen before something like the simultaneous rise of China and rise of India. We simply have no comparisons to help us.
Sure, the rise of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century could be cited, and the rise of the United States in the twentieth as is another. But in the first case New Zealand was part of Empire and a lot of our decisions were made for us. In the second the global security situation was so different that decision-making was easier.
Today, we cannot say that. The Asian region contains a number of hot spots – the Korean peninsula; the potential for India/Pakistan to come to the boil again; territorial claims in the South China Sea; Taiwan. Thailand is passing through a troublesome period; Myanmar remains difficult.
The region is, certainly in economic terms, growing fast, but the security situation remains opaque.
The United States is insisting that it is a presence in the region, and that it has critical national interests at stake. We should acknowledge that the role of the United States in Asia and the Western Pacific has been over many decades to provide a degree of stability, behind which the economic growth of Asia – first in Japan, then in the Four Tigers, now broadly across Asia, has taken place. Without this presence, even the growth of China would have been more uncertain, because it was its integration into the global economy which the United States had encouraged, which gave China the momentum we now see today.
And the US’ hub-and-spoke system of security/defence relationships provided reassurance to many countries in Asia – and still does today. But as Asia grows in power, Defence defence planners across the region are looking to increase the military status of their countries. Defence expenditure has risen in Singapore, Indonesia, India, and Thailand to name a few countries. China obviously. Japan and South Korea also. Australia has issued a new White Paper on defence which includes the proposal that its maritime posture needs to be increased substantially. New Zealand’s White Paper will be released later this year.
And the range of issues confronting the region is growing. People- smuggling. Transnational crime. Pandemics. Energy security. Climate change. Cyber security.
In the ongoing discussion of whether one or more regional institutions can help the countries of the region deal with these issues, New Zealand has been able to gain access to the East Asia Summit. Now that the US has made it clear that it wishes to join this group, there will be more attention given to what it does and how it does it. New Zealand has been a partner of ASEAN for over 30 years. The other regional institutions- the ASEAN Regional Forum; the ASEAN Plus series of meetings – New Zealand has its first formal summit with ASEAN this year in Hanoi – will keep going. APEC is still there. Trade liberalisation in the region is still an issue for New Zealand, because we do not as yet have liberalised access to the important markets of Korea, India, and Japan.
All in all, therefore, the range of issues which New Zealand has to address in the Asian region is substantial, complicated, and not always offering easy solutions.
To do this is not just a foreign policy debate. It is about the way in which we want New Zealand to grow in an Asian century.
- by Dr Richard Grant, Asia:NZ Executive Director
Photos:
1) New Zealand Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo - L to R: Dick Grant, Mike Pattison (Project Directorfor New Zealand's participation at the Expo), Hon Philip Burdon (Asia:NZ Chairman), Asia:NZ young leaders
2) Southeast Asian Night Market, Wellington 2010.
3) A school workshop with Diwali Festival of Lights performers.
4) Mme Li Xiaoljng, Asia:NZ honorary adviser (int he middle) with Hon Philip Burdon, Dick Grant and other officials in Beijing, 2010.
5) Dick Grant leads the New Zealand delegation at a Track II dialogue in Delhi, December 2009.
