New Zealand cuts funding for Cook Islands in response to China deals

A row has deepened between the Pacific nation and Wellington, which says trust needs to be restored before it will continue its development program.

Winston Peters, the foreign minister of New Zealand, said funding for the Cook Islands relied on a “high-trust bilateral relationship”. Picture: AP /Mark Tantrum

New Zealand has cut millions of dollars in aid to the Cook Islands in retaliation over the Pacific nation’s deepening ties with China.

Relations between Wellington and Avarua, the capital of the Cook Islands, which is 2900km northeast of New Zealand, have been fraught since February, when Mark Brown, the prime minister of the Cook Islands, travelled to China to sign economic deals. They include agreements relating to deep-sea mining in its waters.

Winston Peters, New Zealand’s foreign minister, on Thursday said his country had suspended payment of $NZ 18.2 million ($16.83m) to the Cook Islands because the funding “relies on a high-trust bilateral relationship”. Over the past three years, New Zealand, the largest donor to the Cook Islands, has provided $NZ194 million in a development program.

The funding had been earmarked for education, health and tourism. The Cook Islands is a self-governing country in free association with New Zealand and Cook Islanders are New Zealand citizens.

New Zealand takes responsibility to defend the South Pacific nation of 14,000 people and bilateral agreements between them require that they consult on security, defence and foreign policy issues.

New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly concerned about the security threat from China’s growing influence over small Pacific states. In January, New Zealand halted development funding to the Republic of Kiribati, an island nation in Micronesia, over concerns about its deepening links with China.

A spokesman for Peters said on Thursday that New Zealand would not consider further funding for the Cook Islands until it took “concrete steps to repair the relationship and restore trust”.

Penny Wong with Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown in 2022. Picture: Department of Foreign Affairs via NewsWire.

The ministry of foreign affairs in the Cook Islands said in a statement that the country was committed to restoring its high-trust relationship with New Zealand and that it appreciated the funding.

The freeze was announced while Christopher Luxon, New Zealand’s prime minister, was in China for a meeting with President Xi on Friday. Luxon is expected to raise China’s ties with the Cook Islands and concerns about Beijing’s behaviour in the Pacific region.

Luxon said on Thursday that the Cook Islands had an obligation to disclose its partnership agreements.

On his February visit to China, Brown signed a strategic partnership with Beijing that covered a range of topics from deep-sea mining to education scholarships, but excluding security ties. New Zealand accuses the Cook Islands of not properly consulting on the documents before signing them, thereby breaching the bilateral arrangement.

Anna Powles, associate professor in security studies at New Zealand’s Massey University, said New Zealand’s decision might backfire by allowing China to strengthen its influence in the Pacific. “This could be a very good news story for China and it certainly puts New Zealand in a weaker position as a consequence,” she told Radio New Zealand. “It also opens the door further for China, and, of course, China is part of the equation.”

In February, three Chinese warships forced the rerouting of some international flights when they conducted live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. Both nations sent naval ships to shadow the Chinese fleet.

The Times