Andrew Bolt: New Zealand sucking up to China’s tyranny

China is punishing Australia to show what happens to its critics while meanwhile rewarding New Zealand to show what happens to its appeasers.

Jacinda Ardern isn’t just the poster girl of the Left. New Zealand’s Prime Minister is also the poster girl of China’s dictatorship.

To be blunt, she’s China’s useful idiot, used to pile on pressure on Australia to shut up and kowtow. Like New Zealand.

Ardern’s latest stab in our back is her refusal to join 14 other democracies such as Australia, Britain, the US and Japan in rejecting last week’s World Health Organisation report on how the coronavirus pandemic started.

That report was a fraud. The WHO team that wrote it was not allowed into China until more than a year after the pandemic was first detected, in Wuhan, and was not allowed to talk to whom it wanted.

China also refused to show it the original data of the first virus cases. Why not?

Result: the report could have been written by China itself. It claimed the virus most likely occurred naturally, coming from bats via some unknown animal species. It added that the virus was more likely imported into China through frozen food, than it was to have escaped from one of the two Chinese state laboratories that were — what a coincidence! — working on bat viruses in Wuhan.

China's President Xi Jinping with New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Australia didn’t buy it, and joined 13 other countries in signing a letter demanding a real investigation.

But New Zealand refused to sign, too. Its gutless government said it wanted “an independent analysis to ensure it understands the science before making any comment”.

What nonsense. New Zealand had weeks to check the draft of the report, which was so unbelievable that even the head of the WHO disowned his own team’s report even as he launched it.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said more work was needed on how the virus started and “all hypotheses remain on the table”.

And here’s what makes me sure New Zealand was actually sucking up to Chinese tyranny.

China for years has made an example of Australia for daring to criticise it or resist its aggression.

China is punishing Australia for demanding an independent international inquiry into how this virus started, for challenging its theft of the South China Sea and for criticising its crushing of freedom in Hong Kong. China is also furious that Australia defends Taiwan against the dictatorship’s threats of invasion, and stands up for the million Muslim Uighur Chinese in Chinese concentration camps.

In revenge, China has banned some of our exports and even tweeted a doctored photograph of an Australian soldier cutting an Afghan boy’s throat. It’s also hit Australia with mass cyber attacks, some clearly to test our defences.

And what has New Zealand done while Australia is punished?

World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

It’s sold us out. True, it’s now and then murmured a faint objection to China’s thuggery, but then shouted it’s our fault the dictatorship is throwing its weight around.

Its Trade Minister even told us to bow: “If (Australia) were to follow us and show respect, I guess a little more diplomacy from time to time and be cautious with wording, they too could hopefully be in a similar situation (with China).”

By “similar situation”, he means we, too, could get an enhanced free trade agreement with China — like the one in January that let China send more of its approved language teachers into New Zealand’s schools.

What a fool.

Again and again New Zealand has told Australia to bend more to China. Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta declared “both parties will have to be willing to come together and concede in some areas”. New Zealand, she added, could be the “honest broker of open dialogue” with China.

But China doesn’t want “open dialogue”. It wants us to shut up.

And New Zealand isn’t an honest broker. It is China’s tool.

That’s because China is not simply punishing Australia to show the world what happens to it critics. It is meanwhile rewarding New Zealand to show the world what happens to its appeasers. New Zealand is the contrast.

China is explicit about this. Its official Global Times newspaper published a column warning that “New Zealand has set an example for Australia in how to deal with China,” because it “doesn’t take sides between Beijing and Washington”.

This praise should shame New Zealand. In a choice between a great democratic ally and a great tyrannical threat, it shuts up. It leaves the fighting and the pain to its friends, while it pockets good-doggie biscuits from China.

What a betrayal — not only of Australia but of freedom everywhere.