China accuses New Zealand’s high spy of spreading ‘false data’ | World Information

BEIJING, – China’s embassy in New Zealand on Thursday accused Wellington’s high spy of “spreading false data” after the intelligence chief warned of safety dangers posed by Beijing’s rising affect within the Pacific.

In a speech in Wellington final week, New Zealand’s Safety Intelligence Service Director-Normal Andrew Hampton mentioned the main target of Pacific nations on financial and transnational crime points had opened the door for China to signal strategic offers with them that linked “financial and safety cooperation”.

The highest spy’s feedback are “utterly baseless, all fabrication,” a press release launched by the Chinese language embassy in Wellington mentioned. It urged Hampton to cease “mirroring” China with “chilly battle pondering and zero-sum mentality”.

In recent times, Beijing has struck offers with quite a lot of Pacific nations, worrying New Zealand, a member of the 5 Eye intelligence alliance together with Britain, the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

Hampton had final week mentioned China wished to “create competing regional architectures, and develop its affect with Pacific Island international locations”, which posed overseas interference and espionage dangers.

The Cook dinner Islands, a self-governing Pacific nation in free-association with New Zealand, is on the coronary heart of current tensions between China and New Zealand.

Cook dinner Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown travelled to China in February, signing a complete strategic partnership cope with Chinese language Premier Li Qiang. That angered Wellington, which complained concerning the lack of session and transparency round Brown’s go to.

Related cooperation paperwork have been made public, the Chinese language assertion mentioned, including that there isn’t any “secret agenda” in China’s relations with the Cook dinner Islands.

China’s embassy in Wellington additionally handles the nation’s diplomatic relations with the island nations of Niue and the Cook dinner Islands.

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