New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said Thursday he does not share President Joe Biden’s recent assessment that Chinese President Xi Jinping is a “dictator.”
Hipkins is slated to make an official trip to China at the end of June, and reporters asked him Thursday if he shared Biden’s opinion on Xi, the authoritarian ruler of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The prime minister said China’s domestic governance was an internal matter for the Chinese people to handle.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, ahead of his official trip to China at end of this month, said he did not agree with US President Joe Biden’s remark that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was a dictator https://t.co/ozXx6AJYAl pic.twitter.com/JBotwjht9P
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 22, 2023
“No, and the form of government that China has is a matter for the Chinese people,” Hipkins said, according to Reuters. “If they wanted to change their system of government, then that would be a matter for them.”
The Biden administration has made a point of investing more heavily in the Pacific to counteract Chinese influence there, including on islands neighboring New Zealand. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited New Zealand in August 2022 as part of a five-country tour in the region and signed agreements for further cooperation on space exploration and emergency management.
New Zealand has also taken a harder line against China in recent months after decades of fairly close cooperation with Beijing. Then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern raised concerns about human rights violations and aggression in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait during a meeting with Xi in December 2022.
New Zealand is a member of the “Five Eyes,” an intelligence alliance including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. (RELATED: China Hacked Critical Networks To Spy On US Ahead Of Potential Conflict, Officials Say)
The CCP blasted Biden after he called Xi a dictator, characterizing his comments as a case of “grave disregard for basic facts” and “open political provocation.” Biden doubled down on his remarks Thursday, saying he didn’t think they had “any real consequence.”