NZ: Maori foreign policy to manage increasingly challenging relationship with China

WRITTEN BY BONNIE HOLSTER AND NICHOLAS ROSS SMITH

27 October 2023

In early 2021, Aotearoa New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta introduced a kaupapa Maori (Maori collective vision) foreign policy based on tikanga Maori (Maori customary practices and behaviours) principles: manaakitanga (hospitality), whanaungatanga (kinship), mahi tahi or kotahitanga (unity), and kaitiakitanga (steward/guardianship, in terms of intergenerational wellbeing). While it was clear that the Pacific was the focal point of this new foreign policy concept, perhaps surprisingly, New Zealand’s relationship with China has also fallen under the Maori foreign policy umbrella.

For New Zealand, China is undoubtedly the most challenging relationship at the moment. The current geopolitical situation in the Indo-Pacific region, underpinned by the deteriorating Sino-American relationship, has led many to suggest that New Zealand’s existing China strategy is becoming less realistic. However, under the scope of a Maori foreign policy, it is argued that China will continue to be viewed as a partner with which New Zealand can maintain a constructive relationship.

The kaupapa Maori foreign policy framework and China

New Zealand has been cognisant of the challenges emerging in the Indo-Pacific. Its experimenting with a Maori foreign policy should be seen, in part, as an effort to solidify its long-held ‘independent foreign policy’ identity which has, albeit inconsistently, dominated New Zealand’s self-perceived international role since the 1980s. But, beyond geopolitics, while including tikanga Maori in its foreign policy framework may seem unorthodox and quite revolutionary, adopting a Maori values-based approach is a natural progression in New Zealand’s government policy development.

Beyond the changing language of New Zealand’s strategic communications, its experimentation with a kaupapa Maori foreign policy has the potential to be transformative.

Public policymaking in New Zealand has been making incremental shifts towards a policy informed by a te ao Maori (Maori worldview) lens for some time, albeit predominantly within its domestic settings. In the last two decades, policymakers have begun to consider the rights and interests of Maori in terms of New Zealand’s international treaty obligations. Promoting tikanga Maori at the highest diplomatic level is unprecedented, given this framework forms part of New Zealand’s overall foreign policy approach and is not confined simply to Maori.

While the Pacific is the clear focal point of New Zealand’s kaupapa Maori foreign policy, China too has (somewhat surprisingly) fallen under this umbrella. This is particularly intriguing because New Zealand has yet to use kaupapa Maori foreign policy with its oldest friends and allies from the Anglosphere, sticking to the more conventional approach that has characterised these relationships for more than 50 years.

New Zealand and China have had a blossoming relationship over the last two decades. New Zealand was the first developed country to sign a free trade agreement in 2008, as well as the first to recognise China as a market economy. Over time, China has become New Zealand’s most important trading partner, and despite issues emerging in relation to China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, the Hong Kong protests, and concerns around China’s growing assertiveness in the Pacific region, the Sino-New Zealand relationship is routinely characterised as a “mature” one. Recently, Xi Jinping even went as far as calling New Zealand a friend.

However, the increasing geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific are prompting the nations caught in the middle to re-evaluate their relationships with both the US and China, and New Zealand is no exception. New Zealand’s traditional Anglosphere partners, such as Australia and Canada, have opted to take stronger stances against China. In contrast, New Zealand has at times provided more measured responses to China’s actions or refrained from responding at all. As a result, New Zealand has come under significant pressure from its traditional partners, who have found New Zealand’s actions confusing at best.

Taniwha and the dragon allegory

One of the key aspects of New Zealand’s efforts to use a kaupapa Maori framework in its interactions with China can be seen in the strategic communicative language that has been pushed in recent years. Shortly after Mahuta announced her concept for how New Zealand could adopt a tikanga-based foreign policy, she introduced an indigenous allegory — the “Taniwha and the Dragon” — as a metaphorical depiction of the New Zealand-China relationship. Referring to the Taniwha as symbolising “a sense of guardianship for our people and our land and a strong belief in self”, she saw “the Taniwha and the Dragon as symbols of the strength of our particular customs, traditions and values, that aren’t always the same, but need to be maintained and respected”.

This is not the first time that this metaphor has been employed. Maori Affairs Minister Dr Pita Sharples also referred to the taniwha and the dragon, but this was only used to symbolise Maori-Chinese economic relations. Mahuta used the metaphor to characterise the relationship at a national level. Elevating this metaphor to the highest diplomatic level was an interesting development and a sign of the evolution of New Zealand’s foreign policy towards infusing te ao Maori principles more broadly.

Of the core tikanga originally emphasised by Mahuta, manaakitanga has become arguably the most emphasised tikanga with regard to China. Manaakitanga is regarded as a “core Maori value” that combines the root word mana (“power, prestige, authority”) with aki (“reciprocal action”). This principle has been used to try and solidify New Zealand’s relationship with China as one in which New Zealand remains hospitable and open to dialogue — emerging issues notwithstanding.

Tikanga Maori as a foreign policy tool

Beyond the changing language of New Zealand’s strategic communications, its experimentation with a kaupapa Maori foreign policy has the potential to be transformative. Te ao Maori has a significantly different ontological (concepts and theories of reality) and epistemological (concepts and theories of what can be known) base than the dominant Western-centric way of seeing the world. The most notable difference is that te ao Maori concepts of reality and knowledge are not anthropocentric (like Western concepts). Christine Winter uses the notion of ‘entanglements’ to describe the te ao Maori stance: “human with human, human with nonhuman, nonhuman with human, human and nonhuman with transcendent. It does not conceive of an individual sitting outside of the entanglement, nor somewhere along a continuum of individual to community”. Therefore, this is a highly relational view of things.

When considering foreign policymaking, such a relational stance does not see individual actors as the key building blocks of international relations. Rather, “actors-in-relations” are the key aspect. Relationships are the things that matter, which might explain why New Zealand has been keen to maintain its relationship with China despite the emerging challenges. This is unlike Australia, for instance, which has adopted a more conventional Western-centric approach, such as balancing China by moving closer to the United States.

More deeply adopting a relational approach guided by te ao Maori presents numerous possibilities for New Zealand. While it is so far mainly used to refer to New Zealand’s relations with China and the Pacific, this does not preclude using tikanga Maori to build relationships with other nations (such as manaakitanga). It could be strategically used to shape future engagements with the US and other states, particularly in any collaborative efforts under the Pacific Reset.

A look to the future

However, we have to acknowledge the difficulty that New Zealand faces in promoting what might be misconstrued as a middle-of-the-road foreign policy approach. The growing fragility of the geopolitical situation between China and the US may serve as an indication that the space within which New Zealand can retain its independent and/or Maori foreign policy stance is steadily diminishing. Further to this, it is too early to determine the extent to which this experimentation with a Maori foreign policy is to do with Mahuta’s position as foreign minister rather than being a more organic evolution brought about by the deepening role of te ao Maori in New Zealand’s governance and policymaking. The imminent change in government in New Zealand and concomitant appointment of a new foreign minister will be an obvious litmus test. But as incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said in a recent election debate, “successive governments, and parties, had taken a bipartisan approach to foreign affairs”. To that end, while New Zealand’s embrace of a Maori foreign policy might become less overt under a National government, it is unlikely to be completely abandoned.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biographies

Bonnie Holster is a Master of International Trade Student at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington. She is of Maori descent and has ancestral/tribal connections with the iwi (tribes) of Ngati Tuwharetoa, Ngati Whakaue, and Ngati Rangiwewehi.

Dr Nicholas Ross Smith is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Canterbury’s National Centre for Research on Europe. His main research areas include geopolitics in Eastern Europe, EU foreign policy, Russian foreign policy, democratisation, and geoeconomics in an emerging multipolar world. He is the current academic lead of the EU in the Indo-Pacific (EUIP) Jean Monnet Network. Image credit: Flickr/US Department of State.