'Pineapple diplomacy': The MPs trying to bring NZ closer to Taiwan

Monday, 27 May 2024

A shipment of 500 pineapples from Taiwan arrived in Auckland by air earlier this month. There was no fanfare for the tropical fruit arriving on New Zealand shores, but for the Taiwanese it was the beginning of something celebrated.

The delivery was not only the fruition of liberalised trade - New Zealand agreed to allow imports of Taiwanese pineapples as part of a decade-old free trade deal in April - but it was significant for another reason. New Zealand had become another market for Taiwanese fruit growers who had seen their economic security quashed by China’s antagonism.

“There’s a group of villagers on the west coast [of Taiwan] who are entirely dependant on their pineapple exports. So for them, this issue was make or break,” said Labour MP Ingrid Leary, co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Taiwan.

Leary travelled to Taiwan in April with five MPs who are members of the cross-party group, seeking to bolster inter-parliamentary ties with the democracy, which New Zealand does not officially recognise as a country.

The MPs were met with effusive praise from Taiwanese officials for the pineapple deal, which had Leary and her colleagues joking they were conducting “pineapple diplomacy”.

“At a critical point in the production their biggest trading partner China for pineapples turned off the tap of importing … It was a real dominant theme, the gratitude was palpable,” she said.

Pineapples are not one of Taiwan’s largest exports but, much as the fruit is symbolic for prosperity, the banning of Taiwanese pineapple imports by China in 2021 was an indication of the tension between Beijing and its democratic neighbour.

Since the New Zealand MPs visited in April, Taiwan has held elections and Beijing - which claims sovereignty over the self-governing island and threatens “reunification” by force - has continued a pressure campaign.

China on Friday ended two days of military drills around Taiwan, Reuters reported, which were described by Beijing as “punishment” for new Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te talking of neither Taiwan or China being “subordinate” to each other in his inauguration speech.

Relations with Taiwan are a sensitive issue for the New Zealand Government, which, as with most other countries, recognises that China has a “one China policy”, meaning it has economic but not diplomatic relations with Taiwan in order to maintain a relationship with China.

Politicians visiting Taiwan can therefore draw an angry response from China, which in 2021 responded with military drillsed when then-US Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the Taiwanese capital, Taipei.

On the day the pineapple shipment arrived in New Zealand, May 16, China’s consul-general in Auckland, Chen Shijie, issued a public letter imploring New Zealand to continue to “uphold” a one China policy and refrain from official exchanges with Taiwan.

National MP Joseph Mooney, who also travelled to Taiwan as a member of the cross-party group, said he knew of no negative response to their trip, which he attributed to the “fairly sophisticated” way New Zealand manages relations with both.

The group - which included National MP Sam Uffindell, ACT MP Todd Stephenson, Labour MP Jenny Salesa, and NZ First MP Andy Foster - met with then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen among high-ranking officials, as well as Taiwanese parliamentarians of their sister organisation.

They also visited a semi-conductor factory, a technology park, and a village of the indigenous Atayal people.

Mooney said he was struck by how the Atayal could communicate with Salesa, who spoke Tongan and Māori, due the shared Austronesian heritage of their respective languages.

“There's a really quite a unique, powerful connection between them two islands.”

Mooney and Leary are both co-chairs of another parliamentary group, New Zealand’s branch of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which advocates against the Chinese Communist Party.

Leary said the trip for was about “reaching across to see how our islands can create deeper levels of trust and engagement”.

“Obviously, I've got an interest in some of the geopolitical situation around the Taiwan Strait and in the Pacific … But the Taiwanese friendship group is an opportunity for soft diplomacy.”

And, of course, the pineapples.

“You’ll be getting them in your supermarket any day,” said Stephenson, the ACT MP.