New Zealand used high-level talks in Beijing to raise concerns about the surprise deployment of Chinese warships off its western coast, New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said yesterday.
Dozens of commercial flights were forced to divert last week when the vessels announced live-fire drills underneath a busy flight path halfway between Australia and New Zealand.
Both nations have criticized China for springing the drills with little warning — Australian officials said a last-minute alert was broadcast on a channel unchecked by air controllers. Peters said he raised “the failure to give us adequate notice” while meeting with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) in Beijing on Wednesday.
Photo: Reuters
“This is a failure in [our relationship] at this time, and we’d like to have it corrected into the future,” Peters told reporters in Beijing following the meeting.
“We did place on record our concern, and the expectation that we will have a better warning in the future,” he said. “I think it would be true to say that he took our concerns on board.”
Wang told Peters both countries should become partners of mutual trust and resolve “some specific differences” through dialogue, a readout from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Peters was in Beijing for a three-day visit after relations between the two countries became strained over the drills.
New Zealand also raised the importance of “international rules” underpinning “stability” in the region, Peters said in a statement released yesterday.
“Our region and the world are facing a myriad of challenges, including increased tensions in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait,” it said.
Australia and close ally New Zealand have been monitoring the vessels — a frigate, a cruiser and a supply tanker — since they were detected in international waters off Australia last week.
Officials said 49 commercial flights were forced to divert around the live-fire zone on Friday last week.
The Chinese ships were south of Tasmania in Australia’s exclusive economic zone and were now moving west, the New Zealand Defense Force said on Wednesday.
China has defended its conduct as “safe, standard and professional.”
Peters said he also raised China’s missile launch test in September last year that landed near French Polynesia’s exclusive economic zone, of which “most Pacific Island nations got no warning at all” and New Zealand got “little warning.”
China was considering the issue of providing earlier notice for future naval drills, he said.
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