Prime minister has been coming under pressure from allies to take a tougher approach towards country’s largest trading partner
New Zealand’s differences with China are becoming “harder to reconcile,” the prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said, as she called on China “to act in the world in ways that are consistent with its responsibilities as a growing power”.
Ardern’s comments were made as New Zealand’s government comes under increasing pressure, both internally and from international allies, to take a firmer stance on concerns over human rights abuses of Uyghur people in China’s Xinjiang province. Last week, the Act party presented a motion for New Zealand’s parliament to debate whether the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang constitutes genocide – a motion that Labour will discuss this week.
